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THE NEW

ITALIAN AMERICAN:

How InterMarrIage

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•Jaws of Defeat:ItalIan MIlItary HIstory

•Helen CIrese: roarIng 20s attorney

•Italy anD tHe HoloCaust,, ContInueD

•Book revIew: The Swerve

•wHy everytHIng

Matters

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The magazine of the Italic Institute of America

XXXIX, 2014

Managing Editor - John L. ManciniAssociate Editor - Bill Dal CerroDesign Editor - Andrew RicciProduction Manager - Rita L. ManciniTechnical Support - Vincent ElardeResearch Associates - Peggy Fox, JosephGraziose, Joseph D’AlelioFeature Writers - Bill Dal Cerro, AlfredCardone, Don Fiore, Rosario Iaconis, BobMasullo, Louis Cornaro, Anthony Vecchione

The Italic WayTM (ISSN 1079-2619) is pub-lished by the Italic Institute of America,Inc., PO Box 818, Floral Park, NY 11002 ,©2014 by the Italic Institute of America,Inc. All rights reserved. The Italic Way isa trademark of the Italic Institute.Reproduction without permission is pro-hibited. Subscription is free to all mem-bers of Italic Institute of America, Inc.

Direct all inquiries to (516) 488-7400. Website: www.italic.org

email: ItalicOne@italic.org

The Italic Way

TidbitsITALY CARESLast August, New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter wrote of his Italian vacation in Liguriaduring which his son developed a rash. He was able to see an Italian doctor who treated therash at no charge. Porter wrote this about his experience: “Italy may be in a funk, with a shrink-ing economy and a high unemployment rate, but the United States can learn a lot from it, andnot just about the benefits of public health care. Italians live longer. Their poverty rate is muchlower than ours. If they lose their jobs or suffer some other misfortune, they can turn to a moregenerous social safety net.”

Porter also asked Harvard economist Alberto Alesina why Italians and Europeans accept high-er taxes than Americans for social programs: “Americans who think they have a fair shot atstriking it rich vote against high taxes on their expected future wealth. Europeans who believe wealth is mostly a matter of luck and con-nections are less resistant to paying taxes for collective welfare.”

Just to balance this opinion, it should be said that many Americans fear that such social generosity would be monopolized by illegal res-idents and by citizens who have been acculturated to living off society. Europeans may eventually be confronted with a similar dilemma

as millions of immigrants currently flood their shores.

Contents

Tidbits ................................................................................1

Amazing People ..................................................................2

All’Italiana ..........................................................................4

World Notes ........................................................................6

Editorials ............................................................................8

Forum Italicum (Why Everything Matters)........................9

Helen Cirese, Attorney ....................................................10

Intermarriage (Cover Story) ..............................................12

The Jaws of Defeat ..........................................................14

The Swerve (Book Review)...............................................17

Italy by the Book ..............................................................19

Italy and the Holocaust, cont’d ........................................21

What’s a Latino?................................................................23

If Rome Didn’t Exist.........................................................25

XXXIX, 2014

“Learning about our origins is an important legacy to our children, since memories are not used toremember lost time, but to start again, knowing that losing our roots inevitably leads to a loss in our identity as a people who live, think and love.” Gabriele D’Annunzio 1863-1938

Quotable

1

Cover photo by iStock.com,professional models

VINCE LOMBARDI (1913 - 1970) 100 YearsForty-four years after Vince Lombardi’s death in 1970, the NFL

championship game was played for the first time in the cold-weath-

er region of Metro New York, Lombardi’s home turf.

The NFL has become a billion dollar business and football the most

popular sport in America, a distinction that Lombardi, who would

have turned 100 years old in 2013, helped to create.

The iconic coach traversed the line between being an assimilated

American while at the same time maintaining a sense of pride in his

heritage. In his 1999 biography of Lombardi, When Pride Still

Mattered, author David Maraniss cites an incident in the early 1960s

when Lombardi first came to the Green Bay Packers. It involved

Lombardi and fellow Italian American Jack Vainisi, Green Bay’s

scouting director:

“Most of the board members were in Green Bay’s social elite, mem-

bers of Oneida Golf and Riding, and despite their awe of Lombardi their attitudes tended to be condescending toward Italians. ‘There’s

the Italian Mafia’ was one of their common salutations when Lombardi and Vainisi were seen together. They smiled when they

The Italic Way2

CELEBRATING SOME

FRANK PORCUWe first met sculptor Frank Porcu when he joined us in 2012 protesting

the blatant exploitation of the Columbus Monument* by a Japanese

designer and the City of New York. Little did we realize that we would

be drawn into his amazing Renaissance world. *(Officers’ Log #46 & #47)

In April 2013, Frank unveiled his magnificent bust of Abraham Lincoln

at the New York Historical Society, along Manhattan’s tony Central

Park West.

Frank Porcu (a Sardinian surname) is as close as you can get to

Leonardo da Vinci without going to heaven. Like Leonardo, Frank is an

anatomist. He teaches dissection at Columbia University Medical

School and applies his knowledge to sculpture. The bust of Lincoln was

commissioned by a wealthy client.

WILL PUPAWill Pupa is Artist-in-Residence at the Marymount Institute of Loyola Marymount University in Los

Angeles. He holds degrees in sculpture from the U.S. and the Academia di Belle Arti di Carrara in

Italy, where he studied for ten years. His talent in large-scale sculptures won him the competition to

design the bronze statue of St. Roberto Bellarmino, patron saint of Fairfield University in CT. Will

created the final clay sculpture (pictured next to him) before a foundry cast it in bronze using the tra-

ditional lost wax method. The sculpture stands 7 ft. 6 in. tall and weighs approximately 900 lbs.

It was dedicated in January at the university.

Bellarmino, known to the English as Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, is negatively associated with the

Inquisition of Galileo, but Jesuits contend that Bellarmine defused the situation by asking Galileo to

stop declaring his heliocentric theory until it could be absolutely proven. Bellarmine’s sainthood

came from his theological writings in response to the Protestant Reformation and his devotion to the

poor.

OCTAVIAN AUGUSTUS (63 B.C. - 14 A.D.)

2,000 YEARS“Rome was not built in a day,” as the saying goes. It took 722 years

from the founding of Rome to the ascension of Italy’s greatest son Caius

Octavian, known to the world as Caesar Augustus. As the Founder of

the Roman Empire, he had a profound effect on mankind down to our

own day. His forty-five year reign and peaceful death in 14 A.D. solid-

ified Rome’s and Italy’s place at the forefront of civilization. Few peo-

ple appreciate how he changed the world. Italian Americans know little of what they owe to him. To celebrate his life the Italic Institute

has reissued a commemorative stamp in his honor for 2014. We hope to reach out to students of Latin and Italian to deepen their under-

standing of his legacy to them and our world. The month of August; Augusta, ME; Augsburg, Germany; Zaragosta, Spain; and the sum-

mer break of ferragosto only give a hint of his profound effects on humanity and the Italian heritage.

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 - 1901) 200 YEARS

From La Scala in Milan to Tokyo’s National Theater to London’s Covent Gardens to the Met, the

works of Giuseppe Verdi were given even more than their usual prominence in 2013 as the music

world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Italic composer’s birth. So pervasive has Verdi’s rich-

ly melodic output remained over the years that even those who never set foot in an opera house can

hum many of his tunes. Included on any list of Verdi’s enduring classics are the robust “Anvil

Chorus” (Il Trovatore), the stately “Triumphal March” (Aida), “La Donna e Mobile” (Rigoletto), and

the immortal “Va Pensiero” chorus (Nabucco).

What is not as well known is that Verdi was an ardent patriot who, among other things, championed

the cause of Italian reunification through stirring, thinly camouflaged messages and declamations

that filled his Risorgimento period operas. He was both proud and pleased when Italian insurrec-

tionists borrowed his name as an acronymic code for the cause of establishing an independent Italian

nation under a home-grown royal leader (Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia). In Verdi’s own estima-

tion, Garibaldi and the other Italian generals were the true “composers” whose patriotic works were

triumphantly performed on the battlefield with cannon and guns. Verdi even served a term in the newly-created Italian Parliament once

liberation and reunification were achieved.

Coincidentally and ironically, 2013 also marked the 200th anniversary of Verdi’s great musical rival, the distinctly Teutonic Richard

Wagner. The chasm that separated the two men in both music and character was vast: spawning more than a century’s worth of analyses

and often heated discussions of their massive technical and personal differences. Musical historian and author Carlo Gatti once provid-

ed what is possibly the most succinct but accurate summation of the debate – people admire Wagner, but they love Verdi. - Don Fiore

XXXIX, 2014 3

AMAZING PEOPLEheard it, but considered the statement a slur, and after a time made a point of being seen together less in social settings.”

Lombardi’s own experience with prejudice influenced his decisions as a coach and as a leader. At the height of the civil rights movement,

Lombardi made it clear that he had a zero tolerance policy when it came to racism. He warned Packer players that they would be thrown

off of the team if they exhibited any prejudice.

While Lombardi clearly left an indelible mark on professional football, it’s fair to say decades after his passing that he has also had a pro-

found and lasting impact on the image of Italian Americans. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was educated and articulate. Even with his

booming baritone voice and quasi-Brooklyn accent, he never came across as anything but intelligent.

On February 2, 2014, it wasn’t just blimps and helicopters hovering over the Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium. You can be sure that

Vince’s spirit was there too! -Anthony Vecchione

IN MEMORIAM

Editta Sherman, 101, was born Edith Rinaolo to an Italian immi-

grant portrait photographer in Philadelphia. She learned her

father’s trade and went on to become a photographer to the stars:

Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, and even Bela Lugosi, among others.

Called the Duchess of Carnegie Hall, Sherman lived and worked at

the landmark building for 61 years among the art world’s most tal-

ented people.

Prolific author and political commentator

Gore Vidal, 86, considered himself Italic

and lived in Italy for many years. In his

1987 pictorial book, Vidal in Venice, he went

so far as to picture the tombstone of a Roman

centurion named Vitalis whom he claimed as

an ancestor. He once wrote the Italic

Institute noting how he and Henry Fonda

wondered why they were never counted

among Italian Americans. Openly gay and

often bracingly controversial, Vidal was unique in so many ways.

Actor Dennis Farina, 69, tried to balance a career in law enforce-

ment with acting. What he got was an acting career playing main-

ly cops and detectives. A regular on the early Law & Order televi-

sion series, Farina played dapper detective Joe Fontana.

Actress-vocalist Annette Funicello, 70, was discovered by Walt

Disney at age twelve,

first as a television

Mouseketeer, then as

a recording artist

(“Tall Paul” and “O

Dio Mio”), and then

doing feature films

(Beach Party was her

most famous) and

finally doing commercials for Skippy Peanut Butter. When she

began working for Disney she wanted to change her surname to

Turner. Walt urged her to keep her Italian name because it would

be more memorable to viewers.

Social scientist Suzanne Bianchi, 61, founded the Maryland

Population Center and explored how families maintained normal

households through divorce or dual wage earners. Her conclusions

were published in seven books on the subject of families. She con-

firmed what most people suspected: parents were sacrificing time

and sleep in the struggle to provide a normal life for their children.

But of the two, women were taking the brunt of the extra load.

Giulio Andreotti, 94, was Italy’s consummate politician who

served as Prime Minister of Italy seven times. Andreotti helped

resuscitate the old Christian Democratic Party after the fall of

Fascism. Part of the “revolving door” political system, he served

his country in many capacities, creating enemies as well as strange

bedfellows to reach his goals. His later life was haunted by accu-

sations of Mafia ties to insure votes in southern Italy, but trials in

Perugia and Palermo acquitted him. One of his milestone acts was

to abolish Roman Catholicism as Italy’s state religion.

Guy Tozzoli, 90, was ordered to develop the World Trade Center

in Manhattan on his 40th birthday in 1962. He undertook that

Herculean effort in all facets, from assembling the myriad profes-

sionals to overcoming every political and engineering obstacle.

Even after retiring from the Port Authority he maintained an office

on the 77th floor of the north tower. It was there he was headed on

the morning of September 11, 2001 when he saw the attack while

approaching Manhattan. His life’s work literally collapsed before

him.

Augusto Odone, 80, refused to accept the inevitability of his son

Lorenzo’s death. When doctors told him his four-year-old son had

contracted ALD, an incurable neurological disease, Odone and his

wife immersed themselves in scientific research. By the late 1980s

they had formulated a mixture of olive and rapeseed oils, chris-

tened Lorenzo’s Oil, which defied the doctors’ dire predictions.

Though it did not reverse the child’s vegetative state, it stabilized

it. Ultimately, Lorenzo lived to age 30. In 1992, a Hollywood fea-

ture, Lorenzo’s Oil, was released starring Nick Nolte and Susan

Sarandon.

The creator of Hollywood’s famous alien E.T., Carlo Rambaldi,86, was a master of “mechatronics.” By definition mechatronics is

a combination of mechanical, electrical, and system design engi-

neering. It is the opposite of computerized effects. Rambaldi often

observed that digital versions of his animatronics, like E.T., King

Kong, and Alien, were eight times more expense to make. His

robots were convincing enough to earn Rambaldi an Oscar in 2002.

Sports has lost golf great Ken Venturi, 82, and boxer Carmen

Basilio, 85. Venturi famously won the U.S. Open in 1964 when the

last round was 36 holes and he nearly passed out from dehydration.

He went on to a second 35-year career as a sportscaster for CBS

Sports.

Carmen Basilio was an

onion farmer’s son who held

the world’s middleweight

title for six months in 1957

after winning a decision

against Sugar Ray Robinson.

Robinson won by decision in

their second match but

refused Basilio’s challenge to

a third. In all, Basilio fought

79 fights with 27 knock-outs.

His trainer was the iconic

Angelo Dundee, who went on

to coach Mohammed Ali.

The Italic Way4

All’Italiana

XXXIX, 2014 5

All’ItalianaDr. Mario Mansueto, 87, was born in poverty outside of Naples,

came to America as a child, and rose to prominence in his medical

field: ear, nose and throat. He was one of the first to use lasers in

throat surgery. The struggles of his family to achieve the

American Dream have a common ring. His father worked some

ten years before saving enough to bring over his family. Once

here, son Mario’s academic talents led him to Purdue University.

Even among America’s elite students he wrapped his sandwiches

in newspaper and brought his laundry home, a reflection of the

lean years.

Former Governor Argeo Paul Cellucci, 65, of Massachusetts was

an ardent supporter of fellow Republicans George H. W. Bush and

George W. Bush. He battled Lou Gehrig’s Disease since 2011 and

devoted his last years to finding a cure.

Italian engineer Arturo Lamberto Ressi di Cervia, 72, designed

and built the slurry wall that

prevented the Hudson River

from inundating lower

Manhattan and the subways

when the Twin Towers col-

lapsed on 9/11. The wall

remains a crucial component

of the foundation for the new

Freedom Tower. The impor-

tance of this wall is so wide-

ly known in engineering cir-

cles that it has been left

exposed at the site’s

Memorial Museum, which

will open in 2014.

THE RIGHT STUFFCreativity starts early. So it shouldn’t be surprising in this com-

puter age to hear of kids inventing things. Briton Nick D’Aloisio,

17, came up with an app (short for computer application) when he

was 15, named Summly. Installed on an I-phone or computer, this

app translates complicated verbiage into a short summary suitable

for lazy readers. He sold the app to Yahoo for $30 million.

Dr. Angela Christiano at Columbia University Medical Center in

New York has a problem with female baldness: her own. But she

wasn’t convinced that transplants were the best way to go. She

opted to use her skills as a hair geneticist and dermatologist to find

a better solution. Traditional hair transplants require redistributing

a patch of hair from the back of your head, remove 1,000 hairs and

replant 1,000. Dr. Christiano wanted those 1,000 hairs to multiply,

so she assembled a team from Pakistan and Britain to multiply hair

in a petri dish. At first, the process didn’t work until the petri dish

was turned upside down. Gravity made the difference. The new

hairs were put to the ultimate test. Implanted on discarded

baby foreskins, the follicles took root in five of the seven samples.

Admittedly, these are baby steps but the technique looks promis-

ing.

BUONAPARTE, PLEASEHe is the national hero of France despite bringing the country to

ruin in 1815. But it is often difficult to convince people that

Napoleon Bonaparte was

100% Italic. Born in Corsica,

which was ruled by Genoa

until the time of Napoleon’s

birth, his mother was Letizia

Ramolino and his father was

Carlo Buonaparte. The “u”

was lost somewhere in France

but a recent find at the

Northwestern University

library shows that as late as

1792 the family spelled it the

Italian way. A letter written

that year by Napoleon’s broth-

er Joseph (pictured) to a mili-

tary official in France was in

Italian and used the Italian

spelling. An American branch

of the family produced Charles Bonaparte, Teddy Roosevelt’s

Attorney General and founder of the FBI.

SPACE TEAMMATESAt the International Space Station late last year, all the Italic astro-

nauts seems to be aligned. First there was Italy’s Luca Palmitano,

who nearly drowned during a spacewalk as water filled his helmet.

A later incident on the station required American astronaut Rick

Matricchio (below) to don the suit to replace a failed cooling unit.

Meanwhile on earth, former astronaut and four-time spacewalker

Michael Massimino appeared on various interviews to explain the

facts of life in space. As always, Italic people remain an integral

part of all human activities here and beyond.

CAVE MENTALITYNeanderthals are an extinct primitive humanoid. But according to

researcher John Hawks of Wisconsin University, we all carry a lit-

tle bit of their

DNA. Seems that

some interbreed-

ing took place on

the way to extinc-

tion. The cave-

man gene varies,

depending on

where your

ancestors lived

60,000 years ago;

Asians may have

2%, black

Africans may have only 1%. For Europeans, 3% is traceable. But

if your family hails from Tuscany you may have 4% Neanderthal

blood, more than any other people living today. Could this explain

the origins of our Etruscan ancestors? It may explain why

Etruscans were such avid tomb builders – man caves, as it were.

ORGANS TO ORDERThe latest rage in surgery is bioengineering, the ability to reproduce

human organs in a lab. At the forefront of this technology is Dr.

Paolo Macchiarini (pictured) at the Karolinska Institute in

Stockholm. He has already reproduced and implanted windpipes in

a female Korean toddler and an Icelandic man. These engineered

parts begin with an artificial scaffolding seeded with the patient’s

stem cells and other compounds to act as mortar as cells grow and

expand. The end result is a living tube that can replace the dam-

aged wind-

pipe without

rejection by

the body.

Can more

c o m p l e x

organs like a

pancreas or

heart be

made in the

lab? Dr.

Macchiarini

doesn’t see that as the future. He believes the body itself should be

the laboratory with the necessary “scaffolding” implanted to attract

the body’s own regenerative processes. Evidence of this brave new

world is apparent at Massachusetts General Hospital where anoth-

er pioneer, Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti, serves as director of the

Laboratory of Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication.

A BRIDGE NOT FARSan Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge saw the Italian yacht Luna

Rossa go down in defeat in last year’s America’s Cup but it did see

a victorious Italian win earlier. The Vor70 Maserati, captained by

Giovanni Soldini, captured the record for ocean-to-ocean sailing in

February, 2013.

The little known competition celebrates the old California Gold

rush route from New York Harbor to San Francisco Bay around

Cape Horn, about 13,000 miles. Soldini’s crew broke the previous

record held by a French boat since 1998. His official time was 47

days, 42 minutes, and 29 seconds, beating the French record by a

full ten days! Back in 1853, America’s famous Flying Cloud estab-

lished a 100-year record with a sailing of 89 days.

ROME TO KYOTOThe Roman Empire was more than a collection of countries around

the Mediterranean Sea. Archeologists have known for years how

extensive Roman trade was on three continents. Roman coins have

surfaced in China, no doubt payment for Chinese goods, and a trad-

ing post unearthed in Ireland testifies to the reach of Italian com-

merce in 198 AD (see issue XXVI). But recently, Italian glass

beads were found in a 5th Century Japanese tomb outside Kyoto.

The intriguing question is whether these artifacts were older

World Notes

The Italic Way6

family heirlooms or contemporary products from an empire in

decline. Italian commerce was sorely limited by barbarian inva-

sions during the 400s AD.

CARING FOR OBAMALike him or not, President Obama has counted on many Italian

Americans along the way. It was Greg Galluzzo who mentored the

future president in the skills of community organizing. A former

Jesuit priest, Galluzzo showed Obama the ropes when he arrived in

Chicago in 1985, having already worked with two Chicago mayors

on minority affairs. To reach the presidency, Obama’s team tapped

Larry Grisolano, a

media expert to plan its

TV advertising strate-

gy. Grisolano had

developed “the

Optimizer,” a system

that analyzed target

audiences and directed

precious ad money to

those television shows.

In Congress, House

Minority Leader Nancy

Pelosi always has Obama’s back. Even Obamacare gets guidance

from two insurance experts, Karen Ignagni (below), CEO of

America’s Health

Insurance Plans (a

trade association)

and Mark Bertolini

(above), CEO of

Aetna. Ignagni

warned of the hard

realities of overhaul-

ing health insurance,

and Bertolini

retooled Aetna’s

product line to help

the president with

on-line offerings across the country. However history assesses

Barack Obama, it should see Italian Americans as an asset to him.

SETTLING SCORESWhen is the past actually past?

It seems everyone is looking for reparations for past injustices. In

2013, fourteen Carribbean nations hired a London law firm to sue

the governments of Britain, France, and the Netherlands for profit-

ing from slave labor on their islands centuries ago. The Brits just

settled with Kenyan victims of British torture during the Mau Mau

Uprising of the 1950s. And Italy committed to $5 billion in repa-

rations for its colonial past in Libya.

Recently, a Spanish court demanded that Italy apologize for bomb-

ing Barcelona in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War. Like any war,

civil or international, crimes are always committed. The Spanish

Civil War was especially brutal. Massacres were all too frequent.

The German bombing of the Basque city of Guernica was immor-

talized by Picasso. The leftist Republicans murdered priests

and nuns. A 2012 obituary of Communist leader Santiago Carrillo

described his part in the Paracuellos Massacre when thousands of

right-wing prisoners were bused out of besieged Madrid and sum-

marily shot.

Italy had some 50,000 men fighting alongside Francisco Franco.

After their victory, the departing Italians left Franco many of their

airplanes, tanks, artillery and munitions. They did not even retain

a military base on Spanish soil. In 1941, when Franco refused to

join the Axis, a disgusted Mussolini sent him a belated bill for

Italy’s sacrifices in Spain: $83 million ($4 billion today). The bill

was never paid. So much for settling!

CHRYSLER IS ITALIANItalian auto giant FIAT has absorbed the American carmaker

Chrysler in a buy-out of its partner the United Automobile Workers

health care fund. The $4.35 billion buy-out makes FIAT the world’s

seventh-largest

automaker, after

Ford but before

Honda. Italian-

led Chrysler has

already repaid

g o v e r n m e n t

bail-out loans

and restored

thousands of

American jobs. Its leading vehicles are the Jeep Grand Cherokee,

Ram pickup truck, and the Dodge Dart, basically a retooled Alfa

Romeo (pictured)

CAEMENTUMCaementum (kai-MEN-tum) is Latin for cement, the stuff Italic

engineers developed from mixing lyme with volcanic ash before

the time of Jesus. Since Italy had the only active volcanos in

Europe or the Mediterranean, it was quite a monopoly back then. It

is still superior to Portland cement as noted in the Journal of the

American Ceramic Society and American Mineralogist. Portland

cement starts breaking down under water after 50 years.

Caementum only gets stronger. Until now, the Roman formula for

caementum eluded scientists and engineers. Utilizing new equip-

ment and tech-

niques, scientists

in the U.S and

Europe analyzed a

sample dating from

37 B.C. taken from

the Bay of Naples

and found what

they believe is the

lost formula.

According to

experts, replicating

Roman production techniques could revolutionize today’s building

industry with a sturdier, less CO2-intensive concrete. Caementum

is much more stable and less environmentally damaging than

today’s blend. Cement-making contributes 7% of the carbon diox-

ide that we put into the atmosphere.

7XXXIX, 2014

8

It has been my lifelong mission to set the public record straight. In

fact, as Chairman of our Institute, I have managed to publish in the

mainstream media, championing the cause of italianità and refut-

ing the defamatory tripe peddled by the nattering nabobs of anti-

Italian negativism. Among the publications I have gained access to

are: Investor’s Business Daily, The Financial Times, The

Washington Post, Newsday(Long Island), The Star Ledger(New

Jersey) , The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and The

New York Post. IIA President Bill Dal Cerro has worked the

Chicago media and recently published missives in the Washington

Post and The Baltimore Sun. And, yes, we also target the Internet

– as well as network and cable television.

My modus operandi involves persuasion and a bold Italic world-

view. I have gained the respect of many editors who otherwise see

our fragmented community from a Hollywood perspective. It has

been my particular goal to convince editors that for all our foibles

and flaws, the scions of Italy are the direct descendants of the

Founding Fathers of Western Civilization – the classical Italians of

Roman Italy. But my entreaties aren’t limited to antiquity.

Modern Italy is praiseworthy in many areas. In health care,

longevity, early childhood development and even physics, America

has much to learn from the Seed of Aeneas. In fact, the Reggio

Emilia educational approach – a motivational curriculum – has

been adopted by preschools around the world.

The World Health Organization cites Italy as one of the top two

nations – out of 191 – providing the best overall health care. The

United States ranks 37th.

Italy is still first-rate in engineering and scientific research. It is in

the forefront of surgical innovation, space exploration, and even

solving the mysteries of the universe at the phenomenal under-

ground laboratory in Gran Sasso (Abruzzo).

Despite our Institute’s yeoman work, the Magic Boot is routinely

and ubiquitously savaged. And when the Peninsula isn’t the target,

Italian Americans will do. The usual trope involves superimposing

the Sopranos-Godfather mythos on news stories.

Denuding a people of their classical heritage remains a thriving

multi-billion dollar industry in America. That’s why we fight.

That’s why we need constant access to the media. And why it has

become a personal imperative. -RAI

Bill Dal Cerro

Editorials

Even if you weren’t around in the early 1990s, chances are that if

the name “John Gotti” ever came up as a question on TV’s

Jeopardy you would know the answer: a mob boss from New

York. But, if you asked people to identify James “Whitey” Bulger,

you might get some of the answers I did when I randomly asked a

few friends and colleagues about him: a baseball player? a Wall

Street banker? The correct answer is, “a South Boston crime boss

convicted in August, 2013 of racketeering, drug-running, and

murder.”

Keep in mind that Bulger was no ordinary neighborhood thug; he

was the FBI’s Most Wanted Criminal from 1997 (when he disap-

peared) until 2001 (when he was supplanted by some guy named

bin Laden). It took another ten years (2011) before the by-now 82

year-old psychopath was finally tracked down by the FBI in Santa

Monica, California, where he and his common-law wife had been

living quiet lives of sun-drenched desperation. (Actually, maybe

not so desperate: Bulger had over $1 million dollars stashed inside

his apartment’s walls, along with some guns for protection). And

one of the reasons he was so hard to find? Turns out that a slew of

corrupt FBI agents actively protected him. Ah, justice!

How is it possible that a man more vicious than John Gotti, some-

one convicted in the out-in-the-open-age of Twitter and Facebook,

could remain such a cipher to John and Jane Q Public? We have

an easy answer for that one: media coverage—that is, practically

none at all.

In 1992, when John Gotti was on trial, the media made sure that

everyone knew about it. Newspapers plastered daily updates on

their front page editions. National and local news stations report-

ed on every permutation of the proceedings. Hollywood celebri-

ties like Mickey Rourke showed up to watch. The editors of Time

Magazine made Gotti their cover boy, reminding readers of his

cute nickname, “The Teflon Don.”

And Bulger? The coverage was low-key, almost perfunctory. No

daily updates. No reporters camped out with microphones. No

Hollywood celebrities expressing any interest in filming his “col-

orful” life story. In short, there was no sensationalism, which is as

it should be.

If Bulger’s name had been Bulgero, however, would the media

have suddenly abandoned their journalistic scruples? If you don’t

know the answer to that one, you have been living in a glass

bubble for your entire life. -BDC

FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK

Equal Time?The Media and I

Rosario A. Iaconis

FROM THE CHAIRMAN’S DESK

Issue XXXVIII

P. 9 - California activist Larry DiStasi was not credited for his 17-year role in constructing and shepherding the Storia Segreta

exhibit around the country to raise awareness of the 1942 persecution of Italian Americans. Mr. DiStasi has also written and edit-

ed numerous books on the Italian American experience.

P. 13 - Scotland’s independence vote is 2014 not 2013.

P. 20 - Congressman William Jefferson had $90,000 in his freezer not $400,000

P. 25 - A chronometer measures longitude not latitude

Issue XXXVII (Update)

Paul Ceglia’s lawsuit against Facebook was dismissed and Ceglia arrested by the FBI for fraud.

WHY EVERYTHING MATTERS

Americans of Italian origin have a lot going for them. For one

thing, we share a self-contained universe complete with a history

second to none, a work ethic based on brain as well as brawn, a cre-

ativity that covers a multitude of fields, a

family culture that has weathered every

adversity, and a cuisine suitable for both

rich and poor. Yet we find ourselves divid-

ed and defensive, often disgusted by the

warped version of our culture we see in the

media.

But like so many things in life we have our-

selves to blame. A truly proud culture does

not allow others to define it. Sadly, over

the course of many decades we have

allowed a few people to exploit our name

and our culture for their own benefit and the

amusement of our fellow Americans. They are able to do this

because the rest of us are either apathetic or ignorant of the conse-

quences.

Everything matters! How well we speak, what we accept as

humor, how well we know our heritage, what we expect of our

children. They all account for something.

The old Italian admonition to “cut a good figure” (fare una bella

figura) isn’t just about how you dress.

Figure or figura means the same: image.

It can apply to a group as well as an indi-

vidual. As Americans visiting a foreign

country, we are quite aware of our dis-

tinctiveness. We act accordingly and

hopefully with a concern for the

American image. It should be the same

mindset for someone who bears an Italian surname here in America.

Like it or not, ethnicity stands out even in the great melting pot.

But not everyone has a group consciousness. Many of us don’t

identify with anything beyond ourselves. It’s an individual right,

of course, but apathy reflects

badly on the rest of us. Consider

the sign posted at an Italian eatery in

Manhattan:

O Spagna O Francia, basta che si mangia!

If ever there were a motto that best describes the pervasive apathy

of the Italian American

community it would be this

saying: “It doesn’t matter

if we are ruled by Spain or

France, as long as we eat!”

A Neapolitan boast born of

the numerous invasions of

the peninsula, this old say-

ing has become the ulti-

mate escape mechanism of

a tired people. It speaks

volumes about our aversion

to ideology, reflection, and

confrontation. Unlike the

Christian Greeks who suf-

fered under Muslim Turks,

our ancestors were yoked

by other Christians and

even fellow Latins.

Eating became the ulti-

mate measure of happiness. By contrast,

Greek American solidarity and their com-

mitment to acculturate their children in

Greek Schools were born of a deeper pride

than we purport to have. Even their ubiq-

uitous diners proclaim their ancient great-

ness, not just yaya’s hometown!

As Americans we would be embarrassed to utter such nonsense –

“Whether Mexico or Britain, so long as we eat!” We have learned

much since our arrival to these shores, among which are American

dignity and pride in the USA. But for all our ethnic pride in, say,

Leonardo DaVinci or Christopher Columbus, we pay only lip serv-

Forum Italicum

We have abandoned

the greater portion of

our vast legacy

XXXIX, 2014 9

(Cont’d. on p. 24)

Corrections

John Mancini,Co-Founder

The wrong emperor beckons

gamblers to this casino

The Italic Way10

Helen Cirese and the Roaring 20s

The True Story of a Pioneering Attorneyby Bill Dal Cerro

Not too many people know that the 1976 Broadway musical

Chicago, as well as its 2002 Oscar-winning film version, is based on

a 1927 play by Maurine Watkins, a crime reporter for the Chicago

Tribune. Fewer people know that Watkins’s inspiration for the play

was a sudden string of high-profile murder trials in the Windy City

involving women who killed their husbands or lovers in cold blood.

And probably very

few people know

that one of the most

notorious cases in

1923 involved two

Italian American

women, and was a

historical first,

besides — a female

attorney representing

a female defendant

who was already

convicted and head-

ed to the gallows.

The lawyer was

Helen Cirese, a bril-

liant jurist from Oak

Park, Illinois, and

her defendant was

Isabella Nitti-

Crudelle, a strug-

gling farm woman

from Stickney,

Illinois. The two

women could not

have been more dif-

ferent. Cirese, born

in 1899 to immigrants from the Sicilian towns of Siragusa and

Termini Imerese, was a model American success story: the editor of

her high-school newspaper (her co-editor was future author Ernest

Hemingway!), the youngest woman in Illinois to receive a law

license (she was a few months shy of her 21st birthday), and the first

female lawyer to start her own firm on Chicago’s famous LaSalle

Street (because male-run firms wouldn’t hire her).

By contrast, Nitti-Crudelle was a poor, illiterate mother of six, 46

years old, who barely eked out a living with her husband, Frank

Nitti, in his farming and grocery business. Their physical differences

were also quite stark. In his book, The Girls of Murder City, author

Douglas Perry describes Cirese as “young and unconsciously grace-

ful, with an imperious Roman nose and preternaturally full lips,”

while the newspapers of the time, chiefly the Chicago Tribune, dis-

played little of the journalistic objectivity of today, describing Nitti-

Crudelle as “a wizened-up, crouching, monkey-like creature.” The

two women — lawyer and client — each left their imprint on an era.

The Roaring Twenties was a decade of excess, inspired by the end

of World War I and fueled by the ill-conceived banning of alcohol

via Prohibition. Corruption, gangsterism, consumerism, and wild

parties became the norm. And so, to the more respectable members

of society, it wasn’t completely outrageous that murder soon

became public spectacle as well. Indeed, the women who began

appearing on the front pages of newspapers were simply variations

of the already popular “flappers,” those risqué bad girls who flout-

ed societal norms by drinking and dancing in nightclubs.

But Isabella Nitti-Crudelle was different — a working-class Italian

woman, not a middle-class American party girl, a “disheveled and

leather-skinned peasant” (Chicago Tribune), not a glamorous

woman of leisure. And the circumstances of her case were differ-

ent. Unlike many of the women held in Cook County Jail who

claimed husbandly abuse or too much partying as the causes for

their violence, Mrs. Nitti-Crudelle may have possibly had a motive.

In July 1922, she reported her husband, Frank Nitti, missing. Eight

months later, in

March 1923, she

married Peter

Crudelle, a young

farm hand whom her

husband had hired

before his disap-

pearance.

Less than two

months after their marriage, however, Frank Nitti’s bludgeoned

body (he had been hit in the head with a blunt instrument, possibly

a hammer) was discovered floating in the Des Plaines River. Was

this a pre-calculated “crime of passion,” carried out by Mrs. Nitti

and her lover?

(Note: Various newspaper articles of the time first referred to

Crudelle as Joseph Pudella and subsequently changed his name to

Peter Crudelle, then Crudele, and, finally, Crudelle. Mrs. Nitti-

Crudelle was often referred to as “Señora,” the Spanish term for

“married woman,” rather than “Signora.” Reporters also used the

name “Sabella,” a diminuation of her real name, “Isabella.” Such

journalistic laziness was typical of the times, mixed with a disdain

for Italians).

At her initial trial in the summer of 1923, Nitti-Crudelle denied,

through interpreters, that she murdered her husband. She also

insisted that she and Crudelle fell in love only after her husband’s

disappearance, when the police told her that they likely would

never find him. But Mrs. Nitti and Crudelle had been implicated

by her 16-year-old son Charles, who told police that he overheard

Crudelle tell his mother that he had disposed of a body. Despite the

fact that giving such evidence was also a way of letting himself off

the hook — Charles had also been implicated in the murder — such

hearsay evidence was enough to convict both Nitti and

Crudelle. Mrs. Nitti became the first woman in Cook

Illinois attorney Helen Cirese, born of Sicilianimmigrants. Beside her is Frank Mastrioni, alocal activist. [Helen Cirese Papers, 1915-1974,

University of Illinois at Chicago Library,SpecialCollections.]

The Broadway musical

“Chicago” was partly

inspired by this

murder trial

County to be sentenced to death by hanging. Her scheduled date

of execution was, ironically enough, October 12, 1923 —

Columbus Day, a day observed to celebrate Italian culture in

America.

Another irony is that dozens of women in Cook County had previ-

ously been accused of murder, but, because of their ethnicity and

social status, were eventually set free. This irony wasn’t lost on

Mrs. Nitti, who, at one point while in jail, remarked in her broken

English: “Nice face — swell clothes — shoot man — go home. Me

do nothing — me choke.”

And it certainly wasn’t lost on a team of Italian American lawyers

in Chicago who felt that Mrs. Nitti-Crudelle was being singled out

because of her background. Rocco De Stefano, Albert N. Gualano,

Nuncie Bonelli, Frank Allegretti, and the aforementioned Ms.

Cirese successfully argued that Mrs. Nitti-Crudelle’s first attorney

was incompetent, which contributed to her not getting a fair and

impartial trial. Their reasoning, along with young Charles Nitti’s

subsequent recanting of statements, led to Isabella Nitti-Crudelle’s

death sentence — but not her conviction — being invalidated by

the Illinois State Supreme Court. She got another chance to prove

her innocence.

(Historical footnote: While all of this was going on in Chicago,

another high-profile case centered on Italian immigrants, Luigi

Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, was gaining headlines in Boston

and around the world. But, unlike Mrs. Nitti-

Crudelle, Sacco and Vanzetti lost all of their

appeals and were electrocuted in 1927.)

Before the new trial began, Ms. Cirese became

the liaison to Mrs. Nitti-Crudelle in prison.

Cirese decided to make the blatant reverse sex-

ism of the time work in her client’s favor; that

is, all-male jurors, it seemed, would never

believe a well-dressed woman to be capable of

murder. Quote Cirese: “We simply reconditioned (Nitti-Crudelle).

I got a hairdresser to fix her up every day. We bought her a blue

suit and a flesh colored silk blouse. We taught her to speak

English, and when she walked into the courtroom, she was beauti-

ful — beautiful and innocent. I’ll never forget how she looked. You

wouldn’t have known her.”

The strategy worked. On June 16, 1924, Mrs. Nitti-

Crudelle became a free woman.

(Her husband, Peter Crudelle also was freed, but not much is

known about the rest of their life together, other than three of Mrs.

Nitti-Crudelle’s other sons,

Michael, James and Frank, all

had scrapes with the law —

an attempted robbery by

Michael and James, and a

“Black Hand” type of extor-

tion by Frank — during the

year their mother was in jail.)

As for Ms. Cirese, her stature

and achievements continued

to grow. In addition to being

one of the founders, back in

1921, of the Justinian Society,

the oldest Italian American

lawyers group in the nation,

she was elected president of

the Women’s Bar Association

of Illinois in 1930 (the same

year she and her brother

Charlie started the law firm of Cirese and Cirese); she became the

first woman to chair committees for the Chicago Bar Association

(the Committee for Poor Prisoners in 1935 and the Criminal Law

Committee in 1937); and she was elected jus-

tice of the peace and police magistrate in Oak

Park, Illinois, one of the few people to hold

such dual positions (she served and was

reelected from 1949—1957).

Says her niece, L.A. based Mary Dickinson,

upon meeting her fabled aunt when she came

to visit her California relatives in 1968: “I was

transfixed. We talked for hours; actually, I listened. She was so

articulate. I left that party convinced I wanted to be an attorney.

My eyes were opened to true critical thinking.”

Another niece, Helen Hachem of Florida, says that her Aunt Helen

“could sit in the midst of a family gathering, reading the newspa-

per, and interject her comments concerning the conversation irre-

spective of the fact that she was reading the newspaper all while

the conversation was in progress. That’s how focused she was.”

Hachem notes that her aunt’s legacy is well-preserved via her

papers, which are housed at the University of Illinois Library, and

through the Helen Cirese Endowed Scholarship at DePaul

University in Chicago, which is now up to $50,000 to benefit

potential law students.

Ms. Cirese’s remarks after being elected Justice of the Peace in

1946 give one a sense of her real-life poise and gravitas: “There

will be no feminine fripperies in my court. The maintenance of dig-

nity, justice, and decorum in our lower courts is extremely vital,

because thousands of people come in touch with a justice of the

peace, but many of them are never inside a higher court.”

One person who did visit a higher court, Isabella Nitti-Crudelle,

had the benefit of being represented by Helen Cirese. These two

women—the lawyer and the accused murderer—created some

mighty big waves in the City by the Lake. ****

XXXIX, 2014 11

An American first:

a female attorney

serving a female

defendant

Isabella Nitti-Crudelle, a simple

immigrant farm wife convicted of

murdering her husband

The play and movie Chicago was based on a number

of sensational trials during the 1920s

How Intermarriage is Changing Us

If your family doesn’t already have an infusion of Irish, German,

Polish or other common melting-pot blood, you are probably the

exception to the norm. Being “Italian” is fast becoming a state of

mind rather than a matter of DNA. Once upon a time, we consid-

ered a mixed marriage

as Sicilian-Neapolitan.

But love knows no

bounds. So long as the

“American” boy or girl

was Catholic, there was

quiet resignation in the

traditional Italian

American family.

Eventually, all the bar-

riers came down.

Black baseball great

Roy Campanella and

gridiron star Franco

Harris carried our vow-

els and our blood. New

York’s former mayor

Fiorello La Guardia’s

mother was Jewish. All

the simple combinations

have been done, and

more complex ones are coming.

The real question is how will more intermarriage affect Italian

American self-awareness? Will diluting the genetic pool eventual-

ly render ethnicity meaningless? Will Little Italys just fade away?

What will happen to the seemingly endless supply of guidos,

goombahs, and other blue-collar stalwarts that Hollywood depends

on for comic relief? Will the news media and district attorneys run

out of old mafiosi to do the perp walk? Is that the only good news?

The Name GameAsians often speak of “perpetuat-

ing ethnicity” to describe being

pigeonholed as exotic in America

even though they are native-born

and speak flawless English.

Certainly, in their case, racial fea-

tures set the tone. And except for

the surname Lee (as in the Lees of Virginia), most Asians don’t pass

the social register test. But many European Americans are often

cornered by the same name game. Whether it’s Lopez, Rossi,

O’Hara, or Goldberg, our ethnicity is often front and center. For

some, it is a proud part of our essence. For others, it’s a distracting

wart. How many times have you been asked about your heritage

without having a clue about the ethnicity of the person who is ask-

ing? Invariably, the questioner will slough off the inquiry by say-

ing “just American” or “a mutt.” It seems calculated to make you

feel like an immigrant.

But the good news is that we are all becoming mutts. The more

mutt you are, the easier to fend off Godfather jokes or requests for

a recipe. Actor Alan Alda (family name D’Abruzzo) is half Italian.

When asked to speak at a major Italian American gala a few years

back, he rattled off his grandmother’s sauce recipe to the assembled

guests. His Anglo

half apparently

thought it appro-

priate.

Early on, celebri-

ties didn’t like

playing the name

game for fear of

t y p e c a s t i n g .

Anna Italiano

became Anne

Bancroft, Dino

Crocetti became

Dean Martin.

Those who took a

chance stayed

Frank Sinatra, Joe

Campanella, Tony

Franciosa, or

Richard Crenna.

Somehow, casting

directors and the public gladly received them as all-American.

Still, others with mixed heritage saw great opportunities by doing

Italian shtick. Danny Aiello is half Russian and does mostly mafia

roles. The same can be said for Robert DeNiro (mother’s name:

Admiral), Sylvester Stallone (mother: Labofish), and The

Soprano’s Steve Schirripa (his Jewish grandfather was actually a

gangster).

Others preferred escape by marriage. Joy Behar, (nee Occhiuto),

comedian and former co-host on

ABC’s The View, has a penchant

for marrying Jewish men. Behar

was husband number one and

Janowitz is the surname of her

latest. Intelligent, funny, and

opinionated, Behar’s name does-

n’t reveal the strong Italian

female she actually is.

Marianna De Marco, author of the 1994 book Crossing Ocean

Parkway (reviewed in issue XXIV), shares Joy Behar’s attraction

to Jewish men. After marrying Stuart Torgovnick she wrote that

Jewish culture represented “upward mobility” to her. In fact, her

marriage to him was her “liberation.” Growing up in Bensonhurst,

Brooklyn, De Marco found immigrant-based Italian

American culture an intellectual dead-end. Like Joy

The Italic Way12

THEN THERE WERE NONE:

One high profile intermarriage is that of New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio. The mayor was born of a

German American father but embraced his maternal Italian side, along with the surname.

De Blasio’s children are Chiara and Dante, clearly an homage to their Italian roots.

by John Mancini, Bill Dal Cerro, Anthony Vecchione

To some, marrying outside

means liberation

and upward mobility

Behar the lure of Jewish intellect can often turn to romance. Thus

it is and will be for many Italian Americans who have yet to dis-

cover their classical roots.

In 2013, New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio saw things

quite the opposite. His liberation was in dropping his German sur-

name, Wilhelm, in favor of his maternal one. But he didn’t stop

there. His amorous eye fell for an African American lady. From

that marriage came Dante and Chiara de Blasio – partly-vested

Italian Americans with complete Italian names.

The Food ChainRemember when you watched in horror as your immigrant grand-

father ate a lamb’s head (capozello) or enjoyed a dish of cow stom-

ach (tripa) or salted cod (baccala`)? If the first generation taught

us anything, it was that nothing in nature should be foreign to us.

Our parents, the second generation, were less daring, preferring

octopus (polpo), conch (scungilli), and broccoli di rapa. The third

generation went upscale to fish stew (cioppino), anything parmi-

giana, and fried calamari.

How the fourth and fifth generation reacts to the down-home

Italian cuisine depends on their ethnic mix and degree of assimila-

tion. All bets are on 12-topping pizzas and microwave pastas.

There is a culinary price to pay for

intermarriage. Gone are the slaving

Italian mammas willing to spend a

lifetime cooking, serving, and clean-

ing up for twenty guests at a clip. In

her place is the “American” wife

who would rather order in and eat

off plastic plates. The tradition of

putting on a good show is reserved

for Thanksgiving in the mixed American family today. Chances are

you haven’t been offered a drink, coffee, or pastry when visiting a

modern Italian American family. That wasn’t the way it used to be,

when even the

briefest stopover

required formal hos-

pitality. It was a mat-

ter of family honor.

The irony in all this is

that our heritage has

all but boiled down to

food. Everyone in

America knows about

our regional cuisines,

and tunes into cook-

ing shows with Lidia

Bastianich, Giada

DeLaurentiis, or

Mario Batali. Yet, for

all the perfection of

technique and

purity of ingredients, Italian American cuisine is now in the hands

of only an occasional paesan’ who realizes he or she is the last bas-

tion against Stouffer’s Lasagna or DiGiorno Pizza.

Since food is our only

means of expression

these days, one won-

ders why our cuisine

never incorporated a

tradition for Columbus

Day to equate the earth-

changing event with

italianita`. Maybe it’s

because Columbus

wasn’t a saint. St. Joseph’s Day may bring forth sfinge, zeppole, or

an entire “St. Joseph’s table” to traditionalists, but Columbus never

made the food connection, not even pesto to acknowledge his

Genovese roots. The same can be

said for ferragosto, a summer holi-

day Italians have celebrated since 18

B.C. when it got its name: the Feast

of Emperor Augustus. The Church

hijacked it and made it the

Assumption of the Virgin Mary on

August 15th. Without a food connec-

tion, two of Italy’s greatest sons,

Augustus and Columbus, will hardly survive mixed marriages.

Cost of AssimilationSomething happened when Italians came to America by the

shipload. What they didn’t have was a national identity or mean-

ingful education. What they did have was an autocratic religion, a

tradition of manual labor (skilled and unskilled), and a village men-

tality (campanelismo). Notwithstanding the handful of individuals

who embraced political movements like anarchism and unionism,

most of our grandparents just wanted to be left alone to recreate

their small Italian world in America. Most were instinctively

against higher education and intermarriage as changes that would

bring their insular system crashing down. What the old-timers did-

n’t count on was how their narrow attitudes left them vulnerable to

ethnic erosion.

Their children in particular were totally unprepared to deal with an

Anglo-Saxon educational system in which their southern Italian

heritage was disconnected from European and as well as Roman

and Renaissance history. Their enormous numbers and

Mediterranean ways evoked ridicule from

more Americanized groups. Without

XXXIX, 2014 13

Italians and Intermarriage

(Cont’d. on p. 16)

Don Grady (standing

right), as all-American

Chip Douglas, from the

1960s show My Three

Sons. His real name

was Don Agrati.

“A trip to Italy can make the

biggest cultural impact in an

Italian American’s life.”

Alan D’Abruzzo (Alda) and Joy Occhiuto (Behar)

The Italic Way14

The Jaws of Defeat: Assessing the Damage

How Italy Lost the Battle of Historyby John Mancini, Alfred Cardone, Don Fiore, Joseph D’Alelio

In a previous issue*, we revealed the “Big Lie” about Italy’s efforts

in the Second World War. Our Anglo-Saxon culture has raised us

to consider our Italian cousins as lovers not fighters. As media

mogul and part-time bigot Ted Turner once told an audience,

“Imagine Italians at war. I mean, what a joke. They’d rather be

involved in crime and making some wine and just having a good

time.” *(XXXVI (“For Lack of Fortune”)

This is the picture most Italian Americans have been given in his-

tory books and in movies since the 1940s. Even today, the two

world wars are recounted with few honorable references to Italy,

this despite Italy having lost nearly one million lives in those strug-

gles. Italy may as well have been neutral for all historians care.

The Italic Institute continues to research and disseminate a more

balanced history of Italy’s military efforts in the 20th Century. You

might be surprised at the details most traditional historians over-

look.

The Great War 1915 – 1918Originally a member of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-

Hungary, Italy) the Italians had nothing to do with the madness that

engulfed her northern neighbors in

1914. What began with the assassina-

tion of an Austrian archduke by a

Serbian gunman in the Balkans spun

out of control as Austria and Germany

decided to teach the Slavic Serbs a les-

son. That brought the mother of all

Slavs, Russia, into the fray. Russia’s

allies, France and Great Britain, immediately joined in.

The very rational Italians saw no obligation in their defensive

alliance with the Teutons in what was clearly an aggressive war.

For its neutral stance Italy earned the reputation of a traitor, a rep-

utation that would have profound effects in another war.

By 1915, the European powers were stalemated in trench warfare,

looking for a game-changer. That game-changer was Italy, still

neutral, but now being seduced by Britain and France. In the Secret

Treaty of London that year, Italy agreed to tie down Austria-

Hungary’s army and navy and send reinforcements to France to

fight the Germans. Italian forces also participated in the Balkans

(210,000 troops at their peak), in Palestine (10,000) against the

Teutonic ally Turkey, and 60,000 in Libya to suppress a Turkish-led

revolt. (Italy “liberated” Libya from the Turks in 1912 and pio-

neered the use of airplanes in combat during that conflict.)

In a series of battles in the Alpine regions, the Italians bled them-

selves and the Austro-Hungarians white. So battered were the

Austro-Hungarians that Germany had to rescue its stumbling ally

with seven crack divisions in September, 1917. No tribute to Italy’s

war effort could

be better expressed

than the words

of German Field

Marshal Eric von

Ludendorff, an

enemy: “…it be-

came necessary to

decide for a [Ger-

man] attack on Italy

in order to prevent

the collapse of

Austria-Hungary.”

[Ludendorff’s Own Story, vol. II. p. 95, Harper, 1920]

Among the Germans rushed to the Austrian front was young

Lieutenant Erwin Rommel. With fresh German troops in the attack,

the Italians were forced back in what is now labeled the disaster at

Caporetto. This disaster continues to be the Mark of Cain on the

Italian military. Yet, despite the rout, 40,000 killed or wounded,

and the surrender of 265,000 Italian

troops, the enemy was stopped on the

Piave River before even one French or

British soldier arrived to help. It is also

rarely mentioned that when the

Americans entered WW I, they sent

hundreds of candidate pilots to Italy,

including future New York mayor

Fiorello LaGuardia, for training at Italian aviation schools. This

alone serves as an indicator of how advanced Italy was in aeronau-

tics at the time. The Italians had already successfully deployed

mass squadrons of Caproni bombers in strategic raids on Austrian

naval and rail yards.

On the Western Front, the Italian II Corps (53,000 men) helped to

stop Germany’s last offensive at the Second Battle of the Marne.

Marshal Philippe Petain, as late as 1934, acknowledged that the

Italians under General Albricci saved the Allied flank. The

Americans would soon be famously engaged in that battle at

Chậteau Thierry and Belleau Wood. But who remembers the

Italians?

By November, 1918, the Italian Army completed the destruction of

its enemy at Vittorio Veneto, capturing 450,000 prisoners and final-

ly achieving Austria-Hungary’s collapse. Germany’s last ally was

crushed and its southern flank now exposed. German General

Kalisch, recalling his advice to the Kaiser during a meeting of the

German high command at Spa, Germany, wrote: “In consequence

of Vittorio Veneto the door into South Germany is open to the

Italians, and Germany has no reserves with which to

For its neutral stance before

WW I, Italy earned the

reputation of a traitor

German Field Marshal

von Ludendorff did

not underestimate

Italy’s resolve in the

First World War

XXXIX, 2014 15

The Jaws of Defeat: Assessing the Damageoppose them. For this reason Germany must accept any armistice

conditions; she is at the mercy of her enemies.” The Germans

would linger on only for another week on the Western Front.

Nevertheless, the Allies did not inflict a coup de gras on the

German Army as the Italians did to the Austro-Hungarians.

Although the terms of the Armistice cost the Germans their planes

and armaments, their army in France withdrew, intact, back to

Germany.

Italy lost over 650,000 soldiers in the Great War. Yet, all its stun-

ning victories and sacrifice have

been darkened by Caporetto, inces-

santly emphasized by Allied histori-

ans to this day. In addition, Italians

considered the war a “mutilated vic-

tory.” The Allies reneged on many

terms of the secret Treaty of London,

denying Italy much of the territory it

had been promised.

World War II (June, 1940 – September, 1943)Why Italy joined the Axis, a painful decision, will not be dealt with

here. What is rarely considered, however, is the burden on Italy of

being an ally of a nation consumed by racial superiority, having at

its head a maniacal madman who made countless strategic blun-

ders. It is, no doubt, strange to hear this version of the Axis.

Normally, it is told as a tale of a mighty and efficient German

nation chained to the corpse of a weak, deceitful Italy. It is shock-

ing to read some American and British military historians defend-

ing Nazi Germany as a victim of the Italian alliance instead of the

other way around. “We had them in the

First War, it’s your turn now,” was the

running tale the Allies spun about Italy in

the Axis, followed by a litany of how

Mussolini dragged his unwilling partner

into North Africa and the Balkans, delay-

ing Hitler’s magnificent timetable to van-

quish the Soviet Union.

These same historians seem to forget that

Germany’s military “genius,” Adolph

Hitler, let 338,000 French and British

troops escape at Dunkirk, or that he invad-

ed the USSR before finishing off Great

Britain, or that he refused to help invade

Malta, the key to the Mediterranean. Italy

was to pay the ultimate price for these

strategic blunders.

And let us not forget which Axis partner

opted to exterminate Jews and Slavs as

soon as it won victories on the Eastern

Front. Germany’s military “genius” man-

aged to unify all Russian-hating Slavs with

that decision. As author Paul Kennedy suggests in his new

book Engineers of Victory: Hitler’s cruelty cost the Axis

potentially 40 million Ukrainian allies, traditional enemies of

Russia.

Italy, with half the population and a fraction of the industrial capac-

ity of Germany-Austria, and few natural resources, was engaged on

multiple fronts: in the north and south Atlantic, on the Eastern

Front, in the Mediterranean, in the Balkans, in East Africa, in North

Africa, on the Black Sea, and even in the Battle of Britain.

Moreover, for nearly half the years between 1911 and 1945, Italian

troops were waging war somewhere. When the Second World War

came, Italians had just finished fight-

ing to victory in the Spanish Civil

War. They hadn’t lost a war or con-

flict in the 20th Century until 1943.

To say they were exhausted spiritual-

ly and materially would be an under-

statement.

For those with a deep interest in mil-

itary history who have not read of the

events to follow, don’t be surprised. The victorious Allies had a

historical interest in maintaining the myth of Italy as an ineffectual

power. Even Italy’s German ally needed a scapegoat to cover its

own failings. Moreover, Italian historians rarely published in

English and, to most, defending the Italian military is tantamount to

defending Fascism and Mussolini. Academia often takes a back

seat to politics.

So, let us revisit the Second World War from the Italian perspective.

Why Did Italy Declare War on the United States?It would seem insane for a nation with a

land area the size of Arizona and a popu-

lation half that of Hitler’s Reich or Japan

to declare war on the USA. But it was the

logical conclusion to America’s pro-

British “neutrality.” President Roosevelt’s

Lend-Lease program unleashed America’s

vast industrial base in support of the

British war effort. Thousands of tanks,

ships and warplanes were shipped to

England even before Italy and Germany

declared war on the U.S. Those ships,

planes, and tanks were used against Italian

troops. In April, 1941, eight months

before Pearl Harbor, when Britain was on

the verge of defeat in the North Atlantic

and North Africa, President Roosevelt

seized 28 Italian merchant ships in U.S.

harbors. These ships were eventually

“sold” to the British or used to ferry

American supplies. America was infor-

mally at war with Italy well before the

Italians declared war. Of course, the final

decision came with the U.S. declaration of

Allied historians often see

Germany as the victim in the

Italian alliance. It was quite

the opposite.

It was the Italian Bersaglieri, like this modern one,

that broke through American lines at the

Kasserine Pass in Africa

(Cont’d. on p. 29)

recourse to a deeper understanding of Italy, the second generation

made a wholesale dash for assimilation. And, unlike the other eth-

nics who had proprietary religions (Jews, Greeks, Nordics, et al.),

the Irish-dominated Catholic Church was not a source of ethnic

education or preservation. In short, the Italian family was on its

own. Assimilating while keeping its Italic heritage intact was a

daunting challenge, and still is.

A well-known celebrity who tries to maintain a viable sense of

Italian identity within the public sphere is Giuliana Rancic (maid-

en name: DiPandi), a reporter for the E! Entertainment Network

and star of a reality TV show, Giuliana and Bill, with husband Bill

Rancic, former winner of Donald Trump’s Apprentice. The subject

of italianita` comes up frequently on their show, whether it’s Bill’s

attempts to learn the Italian language or what name to choose for

their first child (Giuliana wanted an Italian one while Bill wanted

–and got—a more “American” one, Edward Duke). In addition to

marrying in Capri and visiting Italy many times since, the Rancics

also visited Croatia, one-half of Bill’s ethnicity (the other is Irish).

It is a nation which is still bilingual, Italian/Croatian, due to shift-

ing borders after the Second World War.

Even though a relatively modern Italian immigrant, moving from

Naples to Maryland with her parents when she was seven years old,

Rancic still recalls the ridicule she felt her first few years in

America.

“I was definitely laughed at for having a thick Italian accent,” she

says. “I will never forget one day

in class when my teacher gave us

an assignment to draw a picture of

what we wanted to be when we

grew up. I idolized a local news

anchor, Barbara Harrison. I stood

up and said, ‘I wanna be an

American anchor woman!’ with

my thick accent. The kids all laughed at me. Even worse, the

teacher laughed at me, too, and advised me to look into another

career path. That moment has stuck with me all this time. It gave

me the drive and

determination to

not only reach

but surpass my

wildest dreams.”

In contrast to

(DiPandi) Rancic,

many third gener-

ation Americans

reversed the

process, traveling

to Italy to redis-

cover their ital-

ianita`.

“A trip to Italy can make the biggest cultural impact in an Italian

American’s life,” says Chicagoan Frank DiPiero, a third generation

Italian American and

owner of Jeri’s Grill,

a popular Chicago

diner. “My whole life

I thought of myself

as being Italian, but

when I actually went

to Italy (as a student

in Loyola

University’s Rome

Program) I realized I

wasn’t really Italian.

Living and studying

in Italy was like

attending an Italian

language-and-culture

camp on speed.

Being in Italy gave me a tremendous sense of pride.”

DiPiero points to other ethnic groups as examples of what is lack-

ing in the Italian American community:

“Where I live,” he says, “one of the biggest ethnic groups is

Polish. Nearly all Polish kids that I know attend a ‘Polish school’

on Saturday mornings, where they learn the history, language, and

culture of Poland. I believe they go for eight years and even finish

with a graduation ceremony, complete with cap and gown! It’s not

easy trying to keep ethnic awareness alive in America but the fate

of our family and, on a bigger

scale, the fate of our entire ethnic

identity depends on it. Maybe

that’s why I married an Italian-

born girl (his wife Ivana).”

Another Chicagoan, lawyer and

activist Teresa Amato, writes a

monthly column for Fra Noi, an

Italian American newspaper. A majority of her articles focus on her

family history, her marriage to a mostly Irish, partly-French

American, and her attempts to inculcate a sense of italianita` with-

in her two young daughters, Isabella and Vittoria (aka Bella and

Vita).

“They were strategically born on March 16th and March 18th,

diplomatically navigating Saint Patrick and Saint Joseph’s Day,”

Amato jokes.

As someone with a “100% Italian background,” Amato says that

she “came fully developed into my marriage with a thorough

understanding of my own culture and family. I spend time teaching

my daughters about Italian traditions, values, history, culture, and

more, to pass on what was conveyed to me.”

While DiPiero and Amato have all-Italian backgrounds, Jack

Spiezio is a 17-year old high school student on Long Island of

Italian and Irish parents. Here is his perspective on intermarriage:

“My parents were diligent in edu-

cating me about my Italian heritage,

The Italic Way16

Intermarriage (continued from p.13)

(Cont’d. on p. 18)

Probably 70% of the third

generation will marry outside

their group.

The 1952 high profile marriage between singerPearl Bailey and Italian American jazz drummerLouie Bellson (Balassoni) raised eyebrows in

pre-civil rights America

One casualty of intermarriage may be the

decline in Italian American hospitality

XXXIX, 2014 17

The Swerveby Stephen Greenblatt

Paperback, 356 pages

-Reviewed by Rosario A. Iaconis

How many books have nurtured

ideas that changed the course of

human events? Certainly the New

Testament is one. Darwin’s Origin

of Species, and Marx’s Das

Kapital are two others. Before any

of these tomes saw the light of day,

though, an ancient Italian poet

penned a scroll that not only shat-

tered superstition in his time but

also awakened the minds of modern

scholars: Copernicus, Charles

Darwin, Isaac Newton, Thomas

Jefferson and a host of geniuses

who revealed the truths of nature.

Stephen Greenblatt is a mensch

among men for penning this

Pulitzer-prize winning tale of hope,

triumph and history. The author

exudes a profound appreciation for both Lucretius and the civiliza-

tion that created him. (The Swerve’s hardcover edition spent 17

weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list; the paperback ver-

sion boasted a ten-week run.) This affection also extends to

Poggio Bracciolini, the book lover who rescued the ancient past

and paved the way for a return to true wisdom.

Like Stephen Greenblatt, I happened upon a prose translation of

Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (“On The Nature of Things” or “On

the Nature of the Universe”) in a dusty old book store. And like the

author of The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, I, too, was

thunderstruck by the modernity embodied in this most precocious

magnum opus.

But Titus Lucretius Carus penned something more than a liter-

ary poem for the ages. Lucretius’ Latin was at once sensu-

al and vivid. And his words opened the mind’s eye to the

wonders of this world, the universe of the here and now — not

some mythological afterlife. However, his greatest gift was the

poet’s wellspring of humanist thought. Fully inspired by the

Greeks Democritus and Epicurus, Lucretius combined the atomic

theory of the former and the naturalism of the latter to create the

ultimate guidebook to the real world. Perhaps his own contribution

was a dash of chaos (“the swerve”) that gave nature her unpre-

dictability. What the religious call “miracles” or “God’s wrath”

may be Lucretius’ swerve.

Herein lies true wisdom for many. The eternal damnation and

heavenly rewards of draconian monotheism are destructive fictions

that have no place in the pristine cerebral environment of the phys-

ical sciences and the natural world.

In the poet’s own verbiage: “This dread and darkness of the mind

cannot be dispelled by the sunbeams, the shining shafts of day, but

only by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings

of nature. In tackling this theme, our starting-point will be this

principle: Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of

nothing.” [emphasis added]

Lucretius’ humanism revealed “a clear light by which you can gaze

into the heart of hidden things.” The Augustan poets Virgil (in the

Aeneid and Georgics) and Horace owed much to this liberating

onrush of reality. In the second book of

his Georgics, Virgil hails Lucretius: “Happy (Cont’d. on p. 28)

Lighting the Dark Ages

Half a century before Christ, The Nature of Things presaged

the atomic theory and evolution. Grounded in Greek Epicurean

thought, Lucretius introduced the “swerve,” or deviation, in Nature.

Author Greenblatt reveals how

Italian scholar Poggio

Bracciolini discovered the lost

work of the Roman Lucretius

Lucretius influenced Copernicus,

Darwin, Newton, and Jefferson,

among other greats

from Rome to the Renaissance. My high school curriculum

includes Latin, which I have studied for two years. Because of this

foundation, I never felt the need to find an alternate cultural iden-

tity, as I already had

one.”

“My parents never

beat me over the

head with praise of

some remote penin-

sula; rather, being

Italian was just a nat-

ural part of everyday

life. It was in the

foods we ate, in the

art we saw at muse-

ums. It was my father

pointing out that

Marconi sent his first

radio broadcast from my hometown of Babylon, Long Island. It was

my (Irish) mother showing me how Italian architecture influenced

the buildings of our nation’s capi-

tal. The way to continue the Italian

heritage, then, is to have common

reminders of all the great things

the Italic people have brought to

our own modern lives.”

Jack’s story is unique. Few fami-

lies connect Latin to the Italian

heritage. In fact, many Italian American families deem Italian lan-

guage study as not useful or too ethnic. How many parents under-

stand that heritage is more than religious traditions and culinary

specialties? How, then, are succeeding generations to have a grasp

of the greater legacy? The clear answer is only through a formal

youth program or self-study. Both Jack Spiezio and Frank DiPiero

are witnesses to that.

Feeling “Italian”Many Italian American academics and community leaders definite-

ly see the Italian glass as half full rather than half empty. “Feeling

Italian” may be the ultimate metric in judging the effects of inter-

marriage and assimilation. The popularity of things Italian in the

American media and Italy’s exports of food, luxury items, and la

dolce vita seem like the hallmarks of success and an inspiration to

the coming generations. This combination may explain why the

2010 U.S. Census shows only Italian Americans, of all the white

ethnics, increasing in numbers.

Aileen Riotto Sirey, Ph.D, founder of the National Organization of

Italian American Women (NOIAW), says that well over 50% of

second generation and probably 70% of the third generation

Americans will marry outside their group. “The interesting part of

all of this is that while we know that intermarriage has grown with

each succeeding generation, there has been a surprising increase

in ‘self-reported’ identification as Italian American.” This means,

according to Sirey, that even those who are one-half or one-quarter

Italian have identified themselves as Italian American.

Sirey also points out that Italian Americans have made visible and

outstanding contributions to American society in great numbers.

“We have excelled in politics, the arts, literature, science, business,

and the professions. In my mind this desire to ‘identify’ as Italian

American has clearly transcended all of our worries about negative

stereotyping—not that it isn’t annoying—but I think many, many

more of the children of mixed ethnic groups will be thinking of

themselves and identifying as Italian American.”

In his 2001 book, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can

Work Again, Michael Barone notes: “[Intermarriages] suggest a

dilution of the Italian heritage, but they also mean that a much

larger number of Americans are of Italian ancestry than would be

the case if the rate of intermarriage had stayed as low as is in the

first or second generation.” In other words, more mixed

Americans prefer being described as Italian.

Quantity vs QualityBut what good is having more people claim Italian ancestry if they

don’t have a proper understanding of the classical roots of that

ancestry, or if all these “part-

Italians” have a distorted sense of

pride? How many only feel that

being Italian is just more fun, or

that being Italian is simply more

interesting? It could be the quest to

capture an image of the carefree

Italian or to be someone who does-

n’t follow rules, in other words, the stereotypical Italian. Among

African Americans, for example, it is a very common practice to

claim Native American ancestry as it represents free-born warrior

DNA, something opposite the black experience in America.

It may be like

the world of

pizza. A few

decades ago,

only Italian

A m e r i c a n s

made pizza.

Now everyone

is claiming the

real thing –

Pizza Hut,

D o m i n o ’ s ,

Little Cae-

sar’s, et al. So

has this influx

of ersatz Ital-

ians improved

the quality of

pizza? Or has it just spread the joy of pizza?

Sadly, it was the “pure” Italians like Mario Puzo and Francis Ford

Coppola, nurtured by hardworking

and honest families, who dragged

The Italic Way18

Intermarriage (continued from p.16)

(Cont’d. on p. 20)

How many part-Italians will

know only the media version of

the Italian experience?

Sending teens and young adults to Italy is the best

option to infect them with italianita`

Leonardo DiCaprio with his all-Italic

father George. The son is proud of

his German-side looks.

Watch What You Read!by Judith Testa

It’s time to toss out your copies of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella

Tuscany, and replace them with a pair of much wiser and better

books about a foreigner’s experiences in Italy: Annie Hawes’ mem-

oirs Extra Virgin, and Ripe For The Picking. If you’ve never heard

of Annie Hawes and her books, that’s not surprising, since the best-

seller sensation created by Tuscan Sun has pretty much drowned

them out. But Hawes’ books are wonderful.

What’s wrong with Frances Mayes’ volumes, you may ask. Just

about everything. We all know her basic story by now: American

woman buys dilapidated villa in Tuscany (just outside Cortona),

and spends a fortune restoring, decorating, furnishing, and appoint-

ing it, while coyly refusing to acknowledge the virtually unlimited

financial resources that make all that possible, even before the

mega-millions she earned from Tuscan Sun. Thanks to a well-cho-

sen title and sharp marketing, she managed to tap into the fantasies

of millions of American readers, most of whom will never set foot

in Tuscany, much less own a villa there.

In her follow-up volume, Bella Tuscany,

she capitalizes on the success of her first

volume, providing more of same: smug,

self-congratulatory prose — verbal “O

lucky me!” hand-clapping — along with

recipes, “vacations from her vacation” in

Tuscany in the form of trips to Venice

and Sicily with her gentleman

friend, identified only as “Ed,”

and, in this second volume, some

leaden lumps of autobiography.

The latter includes more than we

wanted to know about her affluent

Georgia childhood, her further

spending sprees involving her

other home in San Francisco, and

her marriage to Ed — who takes

HER last name! Mayes’ obsessive

horror of encountering the Mafia

in Sicily would be funny if it

weren’t so insulting.

Mayes tries to be lyrical and pro-

found in her effusions about

Tuscany, but instead comes across

as shallow, pretentious, self-

absorbed, and condescending.

When I analyzed what it is that I find so obnoxious about Mayes, I

realized that a good part of my annoyance comes from her patron-

izing attitude toward Italians, and her mind-boggling degree of

ignorance of Italian culture, religion, art, and history. She

thinks Italians were put on this earth for her personal

entertainment — they’re so quaint, with their funny hand gestures

and odd little customs that she makes no effort to understand. Or

else, they exist to perform whatever manual labor at her villa she

finds too heavy or too tedious, and whatever skilled labor her

exacting Martha Stewart standards of decorating demand.

At no point in either of her books does

she form any meaningful relationships

with Italians — they’re either her house-

hold servants, her day laborer-employ-

ees, the shopkeepers from whom she

makes her unending stream of purchases,

or the few snobbish rich people who

associate with her only because of her

own wealth. She finds the Italian version of Catholicism amusing,

and wants a holy water font for home decoration. Her comments on

Italian art are pretentious, poorly informed, and without a single

interesting insight. Her one moment of humility comes when she

admits her difficulties in learning Italian. (An informant in Cortona

tells me that even after decades spent mostly in Italy, Mayes still

speaks terrible Italian, with an appalling accent.)

But so what? She doesn’t need to know Italian. Mayes lives in the

insulated dream world that only the very wealthy can afford to

build around themselves. There are no poor people in Mayes’

books, nobody unemployed, nobody mentally ill or physically dis-

abled. No word on the tragic swath that heroin and cocaine addic-

tion has cut through even the smallest and most remote Italian

towns. Nothing about the intractable problem of illegal immigrants

flooding the Italian peninsula from Eastern Europe and Africa,

although she is happy to hire Polish laborers, implying that they

work harder and produce better results than Italians. In passing she

mentions the puzzling presence of African prostitutes by a road-

side, but then hurries back to her interminable musings on select-

ing a competent gardener, trying to make up her mind between tile

or marble for her renovated bathrooms, and buying yet another set

of antique linens. The parties she gives and attends are so unvary-

ingly elegant that you start wishing someone would belch, tell a

dirty joke, get nastily drunk, come down with a

XXXIX, 2014 19

ITALY BY THE BOOK

(Cont’d. on p. 22)

Author Frances Mayes thinks Italians were put on this earth for

her personal entertainment — they’re so quaint

It’s time to toss out your

copies of “Under the

Tuscan Sun” and

“Bella Tuscany”

Not a great title, but much

better insight

our heritage into the gutter with The Godfather. Can we expect bet-

ter from part-Italians who have been raised on media stereotypes?

A recent example is Kelly Ripa, a television celebrity with an

Italian surname who claims to be “nearly three-quarters Italian.”

But Ripa, like so many of our paesani, has a funny way of demon-

strating that

pride. To-

gether with

her Mexican

A m e r i c a n

h u s b a n d

Mark Con-

suelos (who

also claims

some Italian

blood), Ripa

starred in an

ill-begotten

video on

YouTube titled

B e n s o n h u r s t

Spelling Bee. Dressing their own son in stereotypical “eye-talian”

garb — dark glasses, tacky jogging suit, and gold chains — the boy

murders Italian food names (“bra-zhoot” for prosciutto). The

judges, Lorraine Bracco and Tony Sirico, ex-stars of HBO’s The

Sopranos, accept the dialect

vocabulary as correct.

Therein lies the humor.

The fact that Ripa and

Consuelos went public with

this gag, recruiting their own

son to mock the Italian side of

his heritage, does not bode

well for the concept of “feel-

ing” Italian.

Italy in FluxIf you think Italy itself is immune to intermarriage, you don’t read

much. With an extremely low birthrate and a need for agricultural

workers, the Magic Boot is being transformed into a new melting

pot. Granted, Italy was always a melting pot, beginning with a

peninsula divided among Italic, Hellenic, Celtic, and Etruscan peo-

ples; however, it had the benefit of Roman unity and “italianized”

Catholicism that melded even the later barbarian invaders into what

is recognizable as an Italian nation.

Yet today, massive influxes of Asians, Africans, and Eastern

Europeans, legal and illegal, are transforming Italy into something

akin to America. Over 7% of Italy’s 57 million inhabitants are

immigrants, including 1.5 million Muslims, 457,000 Moroccans,

and 200,000 Chinese. The center-left government of Prime

Minister Enrico Letta recently appointed a Kenyan-born doctor as

Minister of Integration. For many Italian Americans who have

recently visited Italy, the transformation is startling. The Italian

shoreline is daily awash with immigrants from the war-torn Middle

East and Africa. Add to that the open borders with the European

Union and the Italy of yore is fast becoming a multi-ethnic, multi-

religious state.

New VistasWith the dilution of the old Italian American in the U.S., however,

things may be brighter. Perhaps we can look forward to fewer tes-

timonials to the Mafia and to la miseria of the Old Country. With

the infusion of Irish word craft and Anglo scholarship, our heritage

may go beyond the repetitive immigrant experience and into some-

thing more complex. Perhaps the rampant apathy pure Italians

have for their media image will be transformed through intermar-

riage into a deeper pride and a concern for what people think of us.

Intermarriage also means our looks will change. “You don’t look

Italian” will be a very common response to someone bearing an

Italian surname or waxing nostalgic for things Italic. For example,

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is half-Italian but his Irish side shows

the flag. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio may have the moniker but he

looks too German to bear the Boot. He has even said as much.

And what of the Little Italys, the street festivals, the religious pro-

cessions, and the social clubs that have struggled to survive across

the country? Will they meet their end with intermarriage?

Manhattan’s Little Italy has all but succumbed to the Asian invasion.

Even New York’s famed San Gennaro Feast has been largely staged

by Mort Berkowitz & Les

Schecter, two Jewish

Americans. Yet Boston’s

Italian North End thrives, as

does San Francisco’s North

Beach. And in San Diego, a

third generation Sicilian

American like Marco LiMandri

has, indeed, revised the very

concept of a Little Italy: His

leadership blends modern-American business acumen with an appre-

ciation of traditional Italian

American values.

Perhaps these manifestations

of southern Italian culture will

live on for a few more

decades, but it is doubtful they

can make it beyond that. In

the scheme of things, their

disappearance may clear the

field for other tributes. It may

even inspire a more classical

sense of italianita`, one based

on the greatness of Italy and

the worldwide contributions

of its children, rather than the

fleeting immigrant experi-

ence. That, finally, will be

the best tribute to our legacy.

****

The Italic Way20

Intermarriage (continued from p.18)

With the infusion of Irish word craft

and Anglo scholarship, our heritage

may go beyond the repetitive

immigrant experience

Manhattan’s Little Italy is itself an

intermarriage of Italian and Asian

Entertainment Network’s

Giuliana (DiPandi) Rancic[photo by Andrew Eccles]

The following testimonies are excerpted from Italy and the Holocaust, published in 2013 by

the Italic Institute of America.

WALTER WOLFF from his book Bad Times Good People

Prior to the United States entry into World War II, America was not

readily open to Jewish refugees. The experience of Walter Wolff,

whose book Bad Times

Good People is representa-

tive of many Holocaust

survivors who were des-

perate to leave Germany

and found that only Italy

would take them in.

In the wake of

Kristallnacht (November,

1938), Walter Wolff, then a

young man of 26, was

arrested by the Gestapo

and sent to Dachau

Concentration Camp. He

was released a few months

later because he had

received a scholarship to

study in the United States. America was to be his ticket out of

Germany until he tried to obtain a visa from the U.S. consulate in

Stuttgart. As he relates the story, the American clerk denied his

visa because, ‘we don’t have any firm guarantees that you would

leave the United States at the end of three years [of study]…We

cannot take the risk.’

Walter only had six months to leave Germany or he would be sent

back to Dachau. Worse, neither his widowed mother nor brother

had a way out of Germany. Fortunately, he learned that Italy did

not require a visa to cross its border. In August, 1939, one month

before Hitler plunged Europe into war, Walter Wolff, his mother

and brother found themselves in Fascist Italy.

Upon their arrival, Walter was sent alone to a camp in central Italy

(provincia Salerno), much different from Dachau. There was no

forced labor, few and unarmed guards, adequate food, civilian

clothes, and Sabbath observance. A few months later, the

Italian government allowed families to reunite and Walter’s moth-

er and brother joined him.

In 1940, after Italy entered the war on Germany’s side, Walter was

given confino libero status. He was able to reside in an Italian city

with a small stipend. Free to live and work, Walter chose a town

in northern Italy that had a Jewish community. He worked for the

Italian Army as a foreign language instructor and later at a scien-

tific laboratory named for Arnaldo Mussolini, the Duce’s deceased

brother.

His good fortune in Italy changed in September, 1943, with the

Nazi occupation. Still, with the help of many Italians, civilian and

military, he lived a tolerable life, eventually meeting his future

Italian Jewish wife in 1945. In 1947, Walter, his wife, mother and

brother finally reached America.

ERIC LUMET (nee LIFSHÜTZ)

from his book A Child al Confino

The Lifshütz family, of Polish Jewish origin, owned luxury hotels

in Vienna before fleeing

Nazi-occupied Austria in

1938. Eric and his mother

sought refuge in Italy while

his father went to Poland to

stay with his parents. From

1938 to 1941, mother and son

lived comfortably and unmo-

lested in Milan and San

Remo, though Eric was not

allowed to enter a public

school because of Italian

racial laws. However, during

those years they were free to

travel to Switzerland, where

Eric attended summer camp,

and to France, as well as des-

tinations within Italy.

In June, 1941, they were

required to relocate to a village near Avellino in central Italy for

confino libero. They were given 50 lire each month for rent. Eric’s

mother was given an additional 275 lire per month for living

expenses and another 50 lire for Eric’s benefit. They were able to

choose their own apartment (they found one

XXXIX, 2014 21

(Cont’d. on p. 28)

Italy and the Holocaust

The American clerk denied his

visa. His next stop would

be Dachau.

Though they were fleeing Nazis,

the Fascist government gave

them a monthly stipend

case of Tuscan Tummy, or admit to cravings for a Big Mac. Did I

mention that Mayes has absolutely NO sense of humor?

In contrast, neither of Annie Hawes’ books has received anything

close to the publicity and adulation lavished on Mayes’ efforts. As

a quick index of comparative success, Tuscan Sun, although more

than 15 years old, still ranks around

20,000th on Amazon.com’s 7-mil-

lion-title book list, while Hawes’

Extra Virgin, published in 2001,

lurks down around 430,000th. Bella

Tuscany comes in at a mediocre

103,000th on the list, but Hawes’

second book, Ripe For The Picking,

ranks an abysmal 638,000th. There

are more than 500 on-line reviews

of Tuscan Sun, but only 61 of Extra

Virgin.

Perhaps part of the problem is

Hawes’ unfortunate title. Extra

Virgin is a clever play on words,

referring both to olive oil and — jok-

ingly — to the author herself, who’s

definitely not a virgin, but, as a single, unattached woman, IS often

seen as an extra; however, this only becomes clear after you start

reading the book. The subtitle is even worse: “A Young Woman

Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month is Enchanted.”

Along with being cumbersome, the subtitle sounds like it belongs

on a cotton-candy, silly-girl memoir, and doesn’t do justice to the

riches of insight and observation, and

the hilarious humor the book contains.

Another problem is — as they say in

the real estate business — location,

location, location. Hawes’ memoir

records her experiences in an obscure

little hill town in Liguria, an Italian region most Americans, even

Italian Americans, would be hard put to locate on a map. It’s the

region that contains the Italian Riviera, as her subtitle indicates, but

even with that knowledge, the region hardly has the instant and

rapturous name recognition accorded to Tuscany. So, Hawes starts

out with two strikes against her.

Like Frances Mayes, Annie Hawes (along with her sister Lucy)

bought a ruinous house in Italy and fixed it up, but that’s where the

resemblance ends. The Hawes sisters aren’t rich. They’re middle-

class English girls who came to Liguria to work as rose-grafters,

hoping to combine a bit of sight-seeing with gainful employment,

and with no plans to stay. The house they eventually buy is a bar-

gain — a farmer’s rustico, little more than a shack far out in the

country, which nobody in their right mind would actually want to

live in, according to the locals. And fixing it up is a very long, slow

process that extends across many years, with regular trips back to

England in order to earn enough money to return to their little prop-

erty and make a few more modest improvements. But the differ-

ence between Annie Hawes and Frances Mayes is far more than the

difference in economic status. The contrast of personalities is pro-

found. Mayes is self-centered, self-satisfied, pompous, and humor-

less, while Hawes is friendly, respectful, humble, open-minded,

keenly observant, and brimming with the best sense of humor I’ve

encountered in ages. And she’s often as not the butt of her own

jokes.

At first, what she encounters seems mysterious and incomprehen-

sible, including the thick Ligurian dialect and just about everything

everybody does, says, and wears. She makes endless blunders, tries

to correct them, does something dumb again, but good-naturedly

picks herself up and carries on.

Slowly, over the course of years, she

learns to communicate, both in stan-

dard Italian and Ligurian; figures out

ways of improving her property that

don’t cost the earth; deciphers cus-

toms and mores that turn out, when

properly understood, to make perfect

sense; nurtures close, lasting friend-

ships with people of both sexes, and,

in her second volume, falls in love

with a local man who becomes her

husband. “What a different perspec-

tive you do get on a place, when

you’ve taken up with a local,” she

observes, as she navigates the intrica-

cies of her fiance’s family. Instead of

sitting loftily on the surface of local life, as Mayes does when she

claims to be “at home” in Tuscany, Hawes learns by trial and error

to fit in and become a genuine part of that life.

Reading Annie Hawes will give you — in a most entertaining way

— real information about the lives of real Italians, not the alter-

nately over-romanticized or conde-

scending views of Italy and Italians

that Mayes offers. Hawes is well

aware that life in her little corner of

Liguria is far from problem-free.

Because she becomes friendly with

her neighbors, and doesn’t merely see them as a means to satisfy-

ing her own needs, the way Mayes does, she learns the intimate

details of people’s lives. We see enduring, devoted marriages, and

stormy, unhappy ones. We learn about the tragic effects of drug use

not through statistics but through its impact on individuals and

families. We see people with active social consciences, and we also

feel Hawes’ indignation when she discovers people who exploit a

mentally retarded youth by reducing him to a condition little short

of slavery. Through her increasingly understanding eyes, we see

her tiny town of Diano San Pietro, and Ligurian society in general,

change over the decades Hawes spends there — little history les-

sons that we’re painlessly taught.

With wit, insight, humor, and a wonderfully warm, ingratiating,

and lively style of writing, Annie Hawes shares her hard-won

knowledge of Liguria and Ligurians. She also provides a vivid,

detailed, and affectionate portrait of Italian rural life that is never

disrespectful or patronizing. Her writing is often funny, but she

never “makes fun” of the local culture. Why would she? Through

her own untiring efforts she’s become a happy and productive part

of it.

****

The Italic Way22

Italy by the Book (cont’d from p.19)

Annie Hawes lives in Diano San Pietro along the Ligurian coast

Annie Hawes is never

disrespectful or patronizing

WORD GAMESby Louis Cornaro

When Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to the Throne

of St. Peter in 2013, he was hailed by many to be the first Latino

pope. Not one year later, the media no longer refers to him as a

Latino. After all, though he was born in a Spanish-speaking coun-

try in “Latin” America, both his parents were immigrants from

Italy. And Italians are, well, just Italians.

So what is a Latino? Is it the same as a Latin? Is it only synony-

mous with Hispanic?

In his 2002 book, Brown, The Last Discovery of America, journal-

ist Richard Rodriguez finds fault with all the labels placed on

“Hispanics.” Some folks, he writes, don’t like Hispanic because it

harkens back to colonial bondage. They prefer Latino.

Nevertheless, Rodriguez opts for Hispanic as a cultural designa-

tion, i.e., Spanish-speaking. But even Hispanic, he writes, is an

“Anglo” invention to lump Mexicans, Bolivians, and everyone else

into the same pot. He doesn’t go too deep into the use of

Latin/Latino, except to point out that it

was previously applied to celebrities,

as in a “Latin Lover.” He correctly

notes that it also applied to ethnic

Italians like Rudolph Valentino. Nor

does he mention Iberian as a suitable

adjective to join Brazil with its

Spanish-speaking neighbors. The

Iberian Peninsula is the homeland of both the Spanish and

Portuguese tongues. Ibero-America has a nice ring to it, and it’s

very accurate.

OriginsLike “Hispanic” which refers to the ancient name for Spain,

Hispania, the term

Latin or Latino

came from ancient

Rome’s coloniza-

tion of France,

Spain and Portugal. It was chosen by some North American (prob-

ably an ethnic Englishman) many years ago to lump all the people

of the Americas who live “south of the

border.” It was a term of convenience

for former Spanish, Portuguese and

French colonies in the Americas.

Technically that would make French-

speaking Haitians, black Brazilians,

and Amerindians all Latins. However,

the cockeyed rules of this word game would exclude U.S. Cajuns

and French-Canadians because they are north of the Rio Grande.

Understandably, Haitians don’t consider themselves Latins, and

Brazilians are insulted by the term because it connotes Spanish-

speaking rather than Portuguese-speaking.

Perhaps we should call all Hispanics/Brazilians “South

Americans.” Americans and Canadians are called norteameri-

canos by their southern counterparts. Who would have a problem

with that? No ethnicity is implied. No language or cultural traits

are loaded in. We use the terms African- and Asian-American quite

easily. Just because there is Central America and the Carribbean

below our borders it doesn’t mean “South American” is useless. It

covers everyone! “Latino” just has too many exceptions.

This is all meaningless to the average Italian American. But for

many of us, though, Latin is an important word. Italians are cul-

turally and ethnically Latins, as are the “pure” French, Spanish, and

Portuguese. Tens of thousands of Italic soldiers manning the

Roman legions and thousands of Roman bureaucrats Latinized

these countries, spreading their DNA, culture, and language. More

specifically, many of our immediate ancestors came directly from

the region of Lazio in Italy. Lazio is Italian for Latium, the home-

land of the Latin people. The Latins were an Italic people. The

Latin language is rooted in the Italic Language Family. In the eyes

of the media and academics, we now share

XXXIX, 2014 23

(Cont’d. on p. 27)

WHAT’S A LATINO?

Among Italian Americans

there is little attachment

to the word Latin

We know the pope is Catholic but is he Latino?

Once upon a time

Latins only came from

Latium, today’s Lazio.

It’s where the word

Latin comes from.

Legend has it that

Aeneas the Trojan

married a Latin

producing the

Roman people.

The Latins/Romans

were an Italic people.

ice to what they really represent. We have abandoned a greater

portion of our vast legacy in a shorter time than our ancestors took

to create it. If we had the true pride of heritage, we would have

ended media defamation years ago and created a real cultural infra-

structure. But we haven’t.

What can we do now? One point of

attack is to transcend our blue-col-

lar culture. Lest anyone think I’m

being an elitist, I can assure you I

came from blue-collar stock and

totally revere the backbreaking toil

our working class families endured

to survive and prosper. The prob-

lem is that many Italian Americans

do not want to rise above those

hard times when it comes to their

culture. It is easier to feel success-

ful when comparing yourself to

hardscrabble immigrants rather

than to the Caesars, the Medicis, or

the Garibaldis of Italian history. It

is easier to parrot the dialect of grandparents than to learn standard

Italian. In America, we look up to patriots and leaders. In the

Italian American community, we look up to our actors and chefs.

We admire celebrity and ignore greatness.

A perfect example of this stares us in the face in Las Vegas and

Atlantic City. There, at Caesar’s Palace, Caesar Augustus, founder

of the Roman Empire, the man who made Italy the center of the

Western World, enriching it beyond all measure, paving the way for

the Catholic Church, the Renaissance and the reunification of Italy,

stands as the prop for a gambling casino. The insult is lost on

99.9% of Italian Americans. Try putting George Washington, King

David or Queen Victoria on that

pedestal. Perhaps Emperors Nero or

Caligula would be a more appropriate

choice. But the casino owners will

never know that because we don’t

understand our own history.

In truth, the media and our own

Catholic Church teach us from child-

hood that classical Rome was an evil

empire. Should we accept that? I sup-

pose if you want to write off one thou-

sand years of Italian heritage as a war crime, it’s just fine.

Renaissance scholar and baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett

Giamatti (the father of actor Paul Giamatti) wrote: “The unlettered

or barely literate [immigrants] who crowded the docks and decks,

waiting to leave [Italy] would not have known The Aeneid and

would not have believed they were affected by Roman culture.”

Know your ancestors!

Does it matter that Christopher Columbus drops down a notch

every year? Instead of making him a part of our legacy here in

America, we participate in his downfall. Last year, two major

Italian American organizations offered up the iconic Columbus

statue in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle as a coffee table prop for

a Japanese artist. Sold short again! Columbus should be joined

with Cabot, Vespucci, and Verrazano as the real “Team America,”

the heroic Italians who opened these continents. What other group

has such a winning combination? How many Americans even

know Cabot was Italian and that he was the source of England’s

claim to North America? He simultaneously launched the British

Empire. He came here 500 years ago not 100. And he came at his

own expense. We should lionize him.

But how do we communicate a higher, classical, Italian heritage to

our own people and to America? The Italic Institute offered a solu-

tion in its Aurora Youth Program

for some twenty-five years,

enrolling 5th and 6th graders in

Saturday morning classes. Some

4,000 youngsters attended these

classes. But our efforts failed to

stimulate the major organizations

to underwrite the program.

Another alternative is to tap into the wealthy among us, to find the

Italian American equivalent of Jewish philanthropist Sheldon

Adelson. Adelson created a fund to provide trips to Israel for

Jewish teenagers called Birthright Israel. To date, it claims that

340,000 Jewish kids, aged 18-26, from various countries have

enjoyed 10-day educational trips to Israel, at a cost of $3,000 per

person. Check out the Birthright Israel website (www.birthrightis-

rael.com) to understand the mission and

methods of this amazing program. We

have an equivalent to Adelson in former

Ambassador to Italy Peter Secchia. He

has endowed a program called the

Voyage of Discovery through NIAF. We

need thousands of scholarships of this

kind.

In the meantime, we must continue to

resist media defamation. For those who

still believe America has tired of Italian

ridicule, check DVDs for Don Jon and The Family. These are

updated versions of the same genre Hollywood has been producing

since Saturday Night Fever (1977) and The Godfather (1972).

They are the only version of “Italian culture” that our young peo-

ple know. Worse, millions of youngsters born here of Asian,

African, and Hispanic parents are being imprinted with these

images of low-life Italian Americans. That we are considered

white by them adds a dash of smugness that we are lower-class

white people.

That is not cutting a good figure for anyone with an Italian

surname. ****

24

The real “Team America”

was Columbus, Cabot,

Vespucci, and Verrazano:

A new way to see our

explorers

The Italic Way

Forum (cont’d. from p. 9)

Sheldon Adelson is a big name in

funding U.S. political agendas, but

his heart is in preserving Jewish

identity. His Birthright Israel funds

free trips to Israel for young adults

between the ages of 18 - 26.

Some 340,000 have gone!

The late A. Bartlett Giamatti,

a classical Italian

XXXIX, 2014 25

What We Take for Grantedby Alfred Cardone

One of the strangest things about Italian Americans is how little

they know of or appreciate their Roman roots. For most, Italy

miraculously appeared during the Dark Ages, after the fall of deca-

dent Rome. Magically, the Italian was born, speaking a host of

dialects, but practicing the same religion, diverse in talents — busi-

ness skills, engineering know-how, athletic abilities, artistic genius,

scientific curiosity — with a magnificent taste in fashion and cui-

sine. And it seemingly all started when those cruel warmongers,

the Romans, met their end. Rome had to die before Italy was born.

Well, if you believe that, you are, indeed, a product of the Dark

Ages. The truth is Italians owe some 90% of what they are to the

Roman heritage, from the first unification of Italy in 222 B.C. to its

language, customs, talents, law, religion and even our family ways.

As Americans, we all know that the Roman legacy has had a major

impact on the development of Western civilization — our calen-

dar, the alphabet, the Latin words and roots in our languages, liter-

ature, architecture, government and the law. But that legacy has

been especially significant in Italy, the center and homeland of the

Roman Empire.

Rome provided the foundation for an uninterrupted Italian history

spanning the medieval, Renaissance and modern eras. The Romans

had thoroughly colonized the peninsula and its islands before

Christ, melding the Greek, Etruscan and Italic DNA to create a suc-

cessful and prosperous culture that

survived the numerous later inva-

sions of Goths, Lombards, Franks,

Arabs and Normans. Consequently,

Italy never descended to the same

level of primitive barbarism as the

rest of Europe. Trade, industry and

crafts were able to continue at a

diminished level through the Middle

Ages. The solid base of Roman civilization gave Italy the

resilience to recuperate from famine, disease and war. Moreover,

as the seat of the Roman domain, Italy attracted a diverse pool of

superior DNA from three continents – gladiators, artists, scholars,

and specialists in every field. It should be no mystery why modern

Italian talent spans a wide range.

The remnants of some Roman institutions were able to survive,

especially Roman property law. By the eighth and ninth centuries

the Germanic Lombards abandoned their communal concept of

land and property in favor of the Roman concept of private proper-

ty. The Latin language was also able to survive, preserved by

Italian scholars and clergy. By the 700s A.D., the minority

Lombards had become fully integrated with Italians. The total

enslavement of the population by its conquerors did not occur

in Italy. It could be said that the conquerors of Italy were

themselves conquered by the superior Roman civilization they

encountered.

Italian cities remained infused with Roman law, customs, and gov-

ernment, and even a pagan version of Christianity. The foundations

of Roman urbanization and civilization led to the development of

successful and prosperous Italian city-states during the medieval

and Renaissance periods, including Venice, Florence, Genoa, Pisa

and Amalfi. Like their Roman ancestors, they became commercial

and maritime powers that dominated trade and commerce in the

Mediterranean world. They were

dynamic and enterprising cities that

experimented with republican and

princely forms of government, in the

Roman manner.

Christianity was profoundly modi-

fied and the Church immensely

influenced by Rome. Beginning in

313 A.D., Constantine legalized

Christianity, later becoming the first Christian emperor. This

Roman emperor is considered the “13th Apostle” by the Greek

Orthodox Church because he standardized Christian ritual and doc-

trine. The emperor Theodosius went a step further and made

Christianity the state religion. This enabled Christianity, especial-

ly in Italy, to grow at a remarkable pace. The Church recognized

the Roman genius for organization and gradually adopted the hier-

archical structure of the Empire. The bishop of Rome became the

leader of the Western Church or Supreme Pontiff. This corre-

sponded to the high priest or Pontifex Maximus of the ancient

Romans. Roman law became the basis for canon law. As Roman

power declined, the other bishops would replace the role of the

Roman prefects as the source of order and the center of power in

the cities. The Church also adopted the vestments of pagan priests,

the communion of saints (lesser gods), the

use of holy water and incense for purifica-

If you believe Italy was

born in the Dark Ages, then

you yourself are a product

of the Dark Ages

If Rome Did Not Exist

(Cont’d. on p. 26)

The pagan Greeks taught the Italic people the art of sculpture,

but Christian Greeks do not allow sculpture in their churches.

Pagan Rome freed the Italian mind from many inhibitions.

tion, as well as the architecture

of the basilica. What Italian

Americans see today in their

earthly Church came directly

from Rome, not Jerusalem.

The newly converted Italians

missed certain aspects of the old

pagan faith such as the worship

of goddesses and specialized

deities from whom they could

seek personal patronage. This

led to the eventual veneration of

Mary and the many saints.

Clearly, many of the doctrines

and practices of medieval

Catholicism originated with the

Roman Empire. The popes

assumed temporal as well as

spiritual power ruling the city of

Rome and the papal states of central Italy. They eventually held

sway over foreign kings and emperors during the Middle Ages.

Much like the ancient Caesars, they ordered the construction of

magnificent churches and the creation of great works of art to

project their power and enhance the beauty and glory of their

realm. Without its derivation and association with ancient Rome,

the papacy could never have aspired to such heights.

It is no accident that Medieval Italy’s greatest poet Dante used the

Roman Virgilius (Vergil) Maro as his guide in the Divine Comedy.

Even in the darkest of times, educated Italians never forgot the

greatness and traditions of their ancient Roman past and their

splendid achievements in the arts. The ubiquitous remains of

Roman aqueducts, roads, bridges, baths, theatres, libraries,

palaces, forums, stadiums, fountains, monuments, walls and tem-

ples served as a reminder and inspiration. Classical literature had

been copied by monks throughout the Middle Ages. Inspired by

these ancient works, Italian scholars

developed nothing less than the mod-

ern concept of humanism. They

were captivated by a sense of man’s

tremendous powers, his rich poten-

tial and the creative play of human

talent in diverse fields. They also

gloried in the achievements of the

great individual who stood out above

the crowd. Ancient writers were now

studied in a new spirit of excitement. Antiquity was viewed as a

world of light, which was neither supernatural nor mysterious and

untroubled by the dogmatic Church and its petty clergy. The

humanists championed the classical Latin and even tried to dress,

talk and conduct themselves like the ancient Romans.

The Romans had preserved the knowledge of the Mediterranean

world. Without Rome’s legions to protect it, Western civilization

would have been overwhelmed by barbarous invaders and quite

possibly eradicated with disastrous consequences for future gener-

ations. All these things provided

Italy and future Italians the inspira-

tion and tools to remain the center

of Western Civilization.

The Italian rinascimento was

directly inspired by Roman civi-

lization, hence the name “rebirth.”

Italians, and especially the

Florentines, revered the wisdom,

grace, philosophy and literature of

the ancient Greeks and Romans.

This way of thinking spread

through the upper and middle

ranks of society. It became a key

part of the education of the ruling

class, which was eager to use its

vast wealth to finance an array of

great artists, just as ancient

Romans patronized their artists.

Scholars like Niccolo Machiavelli also saw Rome as a source for

political theory instead of looking for answers regarding man’s

nature in the Bible or in narrow Church doctrine. Rather than

ancient Greek theory, Machiavelli chose the Roman Livy’s histo-

ry for his guide to politics. In The Prince, his greatest work,

Machiavelli describes how princes actually behave and how power

is exercised and political control maintained in the real world.

This was the beginning of political science without theological

considerations. It was no mere coincidence that Machiavelli ended

his book with a call for the reunification of Roman Italy. That plea

was to echo down three hundred years to inspire Giuseppe

Garibaldi and the men of the Risorgimento (the Resurgence of

1860).

That very same inspiration can be found in Dante and Petrarch. In

his Italia Mia, Petrarch (1304 –1374) proclaimed that the “ancientvalor in Italian hearts is not yet dead.” Revolutionary Giuseppe

Mazzini was captivated by Rome,

which he referred to as the “temple of

humanity.” His goal was to establish

a united Italy as a “Third Rome” that

would emphasize its ancient spiritual

values. Mazzini believed that

Roman culture had made invaluable

contributions to Italian and Western

civilization and promoted the con-

cept of romanita`, the Roman ideal.

For Garibaldi, Rome was “the dominant thought and inspirationof my whole life.”

Italian Americans will remain in their “dark ages” until they

unlock the true source of Italy’s greatness. The cinema and even

the Catholic Church have conspired to denigrate Italy’s classical

heritage, the envy of educated people the world over. Rome never

fell. It lives every day in our Italian soul and the traditions that

make us unique.

****

The Italic Way26

If Rome Didn’t Exist (cont’d. from p.25)

It was no mere coincidence

that Machiavelli ended

“The Prince” with a call for

the reunification of Italy

The Church inherited the power and sovereignty of Rome’s emperors.

Even after the Fall of Rome, Italians wielded tremendous power

throughout Europe. Global wealth continued to flow into Italy

to fund construction, including St. Peter’s, and the arts.

this distinct lineage with anyone who eats

rice and beans.

Political CorrectnessTo codify this sloppy nomenclature, most

media franchises have what is called a

Style Book. It’s the reference used by all

reporters and editors for consistency. I

once jousted with the New York Times style

book editor about the meaning of mafia vs.

Mafia. We all know how that word has

taken off in many directions. It has become

interchangeable with any organized crimi-

nals – the Russian Mafia, the Irish Mafia,

et.al. The Times editor explained that the

unmodified noun, Mafia, only refers to

organized crime in Sicily, but that mafia is

a generic word. Notwithstanding, I later

found his reporters using the capital M for

crime stories dealing with Italian American

criminals. There was a time when Italian

American crime syndicates were labeled La

Cosa Nostra. Now the word Mafia is back

and it’s pan-Italic.

Lots of Italian words have gotten out of our control through style

books, beside Mafia and Latin. Fascist has become an all-purpose

word even for religious fanatics, as in Islamo-Fascists. Gypsies are

now called Roma. Talk about social climbing! The word Gypsy

derived from Egypt even though Gypsies originated in India. Then,

they were called Romany (from Romania). Now, they proudly

carry the name of Italy’s capital. Who got the better of that deal?

While the media and government are lifting all boats on the tide of

political correctness, Italian Americans are still dragging anchor.

What used to be called deviant behavior is now called alternate

lifestyles. The term LGBT covers a

variety of sexual lifestyles – Lesbian,

Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.

Epithets like “fag,” “dyke,” and “her-

maphrodite” have gone the way of

crude ethnic slurs like “nigger,” “kike,”

“spic,” and “chink.” However, there

appears to be a renaissance of Italic

slurs – “wop,” “dago,” and “guinea” – not just on the street but in

mainstream media.

Most people are familiar with the term Guinea Red, meaning wine

made by immigrant Italians at home. A salesman used the term to

me recently and was shocked when I told him it offended me. Of

course, in his “style book” it was a standard term of endearment.

Owners of a food truck in Saratoga, NY, recently went to court

suing the state for revoking their license to serve customers at the

famous racetrack. The state objects to the business name embla-

zoned on the side of the truck: The Wandering Dago. Of course,

the owners of the truck are part Italian and insist that Dago is

a proud reference to day labor (“work as the day goes”),

not an ethnic slur.

In Colorado a number of eateries list “wop-

burgers” on their menus, referring to Italian

topping like provolone cheese. When some

Italian Americans objected to the term and

were rebuffed by the owners, they reached

out to local Congressman (at the time)

Thomas Tancredo. To their shock, he

defended the appellation as a wholesome

word dating back to the old days. In fact,

Tancredo doesn’t mind being called a wop

by friends. But the old days he was refer-

ring to included frequent lynching of immi-

grant Italian miners (“wops”) by Colorado

natives. Forgive and forget, right?

More recently, CBS-TV has taken the low

road by using the word wop in an episode

of the hit sitcom Mike & Molly. Our

Institute asked that the term be bleeped in

reruns and syndication, but were put off by

the Vice President of Diversity (yes, there

is such a person) and ignored by CBS

President Nina Tassler. In frustration, we

reached out to two members of the CBS

Corporation Board, Joseph Califano and Frederic Salerno, both

Italian Americans of unquestionable integrity. Board members at

any corporation are there to insure the integrity and mission of the

company. Thus far, neither gentleman has responded to us.

Hopefully, they don’t share Tancredo’s affection for wopburgers.

Just to see if these two Italic board members were discreetly work-

ing on our behalf, we caught a rerun of that Mike & Molly episode.

It was unchanged. Wop was not bleeped or deleted. This is nation-

al broadcast television, not a small cable station. The Mike &

Molly Show has an audience of some 10 million viewers and will

grow with reruns and syndication.

Lessons LearnedSo what are we learning about how

word games are played in America? It

depends on who you are and who is in

your corner. For Italian Americans,

having one of their own in a position of

power or influence seems to be worth little. Assimilation means

not having to treat your own people with the respect you give oth-

ers. One can only wonder what rises or sinks to defamation in the

eyes of prominent people like Tancredo and other prominenti.

There are more examples of how words are misused on Italian

Americans. Only our criminals have “crime families.” Only our

criminals have military titles like captain and soldier. Only we

have rigid tables of organization with dons, capos, consiglieri and

godfathers. Our murderers and thieves, it seems, have quite a

knack for formality and rank according to the media and law

enforcement. It’s all the more amazing since most of these good-

fellas never finished high school and certainly

XXXIX, 2014 27

Latino (cont’d from p.23)

(Cont’d. on p. 32)

Italians are not considered

white in that part

of the country

Most media “style books” lock in our vocabulary.

Here, Time Magazine chooses Latino over Hispanic.

is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath

his feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring

Underworld.”

Following the fall

of Rome in the fifth

century AD, an iron

curtain of darkness,

ignorance and

superstition befell

the West —

and with the Dark

Ages came the

onrush of mass

ignorance and the

loss of De Rerum

Natura. (One can

detect a similar

whiff of religiously

inspired fear and cultish insipidity in many of today’s evangeli-

cal Christian movements. Modern-day Islam is plagued with splin-

tering fanatical sects whose most murderous adherents claim to be

acting on direct orders from almighty Allah.)

And it took Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th century scholar, copyist,

apostolic secretary and book hunter to rediscover Lucretius’ lost

manuscript in 1417 (in Germany of all places!) that sparked an

astounding revival of Italy’s seminal civilization, the Roman

Empire. This “Renaissance” reintroduced the pragmatism, purpose,

knowledge and majesty of Italian antiquity. Indeed, “the world

became modern” because Bracciolini went back to the future.

Stephen Greenblatt avers that Lucretius

provided the intellectual underpinning of — and the

connecting bridge to — the scientific method of Galileo Galilei and

the works of Petrarch, Giordano Bruno, Thomas Jefferson,

Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. (Einstein noted that it was the

pioneering physics of another Italian genius, Enrico Fermi, that

ushered in the power of the atom — an Epicurean concept explored

by Lucretius long before Jesus Christ bestrode the Earth.)

Moreover, in describing the milieu in which Lucretius crafted his

pivotal poem, Greenblatt joyfully describes the literary culture and

love of learning that was an intrinsic part of the Italic world:

“Greek libraries had few amenities, but throughout their territories

the Romans designed comfortable chairs and tables where readers

could sit and slowly unfold the papyrus, the left hand rolling up

each column after it was read.”

For book lovers, it gets even better: “The great architect Vitruvius

— one of the ancient writers whose work Poggio recovered —

advised that libraries should face the east, to catch the morning

light and reduce the humidity that might damage books.”

Greenblatt also writes admiringly of ancient private (and public

libraries) throughout Italy, noting that excavations in Pompeii —

not to mention the Herculaneum dig that unearthed the actual

remains of Lucretius’ work —

“uncovered the plaques honoring

the (library’s) donors, along with

statuary, writing tablets, shelves

to store papyrus rolls, numbered

bookcases to hold the bound

parchment volumes or codices.”

So that’s where the Riggio Bros.

got their idea for Barnes &

Noble!

Greenblatt’s discovery of

Lucretius was as much a thera-

peutic pursuit as it was a schol-

arly one. In attempting to cope with his mother’s perennial

hypochondria and fear of death, he seized on the provocative

cover of his inexpensive copy of On the Nature of Things — what

appeared to be two legs hovering over the Earth in “celestial

coition”— and found a mission and a life-affirming solution.

Stephen Greenblatt’s book is a genuflection to humanism and a

labor of intense love. With apologies to Rod Serling and Damon

Knight, to “Swerve” man is to serve mankind.

It should be required reading for all Italians who embrace their

classical heritage. ****

The Italic Way28

The Swerve (cont’d. from p. 17)

Holocaust (continued from p.21)

for 50 lire with a communal toilet). Each day, they checked in with

the local police and each month they would pick up their stipends.

In the same area were other foreign Jews, and Sabbath services

were conducted in someone’s apartment. Eric’s mother fell in love

with a fellow internee, an Italian gentile named Pietro Russo. Eric

revered him as a father, not knowing the fate of his real father in

Poland.

When Mussolini was deposed in 1943, German troops occupied the

village demanding a list of all internees. The Italian officials never

complied. Eric, his mother and the other Jewish refugees lived to

see the Allies take control of southern Italy. Eric and his mother

remained there after the war while Eric attended the University of

Naples. In 1950, they immigrated to the United States with step-

father Pietro.

Eric lost 80 of his Polish and Austrian relatives in the Holocaust.

His father, as it turned out, had escaped Poland when the Germans

invaded but was captured by the Soviets and sent to a concentration

camp in Siberia, where he barely survived. Upon reuniting with

Eric, he divorced his wife and settled in Israel.

****

Italy and the Holocaust is available for $15($25 for non-members) by mail to:

Italic Institute of America,PO Box 818, Floral Park, NY 11002

or on our website at www.italic.org

Epicureans were atheists, but Lucretius hedged

his bets. He believed the gods chose not to be

involved in nature or human affairs.

war against Axis partner Japan.

Why Did Italy Enter the War with Inferior Equipment?The Italian Army was substandard by any measure. It was armed

for colonial wars with light tanks and WW I vintage artillery. But

its navy was first class and its air force among the best. One of the

major shortcomings was lack of radar technology, which gave the

British a marked advantage in naval engagements and air attacks.

The British also had severe equipment shortages. But unlike the

Italians, the Brits had an inexhaustible supply of armaments from

the United States. The U.S. supplied Britain with 7,411 aircraft,

5,128 tanks, 4,932 anti-tank weapons, 4,000 machine guns, as well

as ships and vast amounts of fuel and other supplies. There is hard-

ly any record of Germany supplying the Italian Army, Navy or Air

Force with anything significant other than coal and oil. The

Germans had few extra armaments to give Italy and unlike the

Brits, Italy had no Lend-Lease option. When Mussolini asked for

tanks in Africa, he also got General Erwin Rommel and the German

Afrika Korps to operate them. The Italians fought and died with

mainly their own equipment in Africa, the USSR, and the Balkans.

What Value Was the Italian Navy?The Italian Navy, operating subs for three years in the Atlantic, was

responsible for some one million tons

of Allied shipping sunk, about 134

vessels. (Paul Kennedy in Engineers

of Victory notes that Japanese sub-

marines sunk only 184 ships in four

years, proportionally less than Italian

sinkings in the Atlantic.)

In the Mediterranean, Italian mer-

chant ships ran the suicide run to North Africa while the British

knew their routes and schedules from breaking the German Enigma

code. It is not clear if the Italian naval code was ever cracked but

the Brits got what they needed from meticulous German informa-

tion. The Germans blamed an Italian admiral in Naples for the

security leaks. Eventually, the Italian merchant fleet was annihi-

lated and supplies had to be ferried by Italian warships and aircraft.

Also in the Med, Italian frogmen wreaked havoc in Alexandria

Harbor, sinking two British battleships, a tanker, and destroyer in

December, 1941. A British-Italian movie, The Valiant, was pro-

duced in 1962 depicting this heroic attack. At the other end of the

Med, frogmen also sank British ships at Gibraltar, traversing the

channel in the dead of night from a

disguised merchant ship in Morocco.

All told, this sort of low-budget war-

fare, from Gibraltar to the Crimea,

cost the Allies thirty ships. Winston

Churchill called a secret emergency

session of Parliament in 1942 to deal

with the Mediterranean crisis in

which he referred to the Italian frog-

men’s “extraordinary courage and ingenuity.”

For those who want an unconventional British version of how

effective the Italians were against British convoys in the

Mediterranean, the book Siege: Malta 1940-1943, by Ernle

Bradford would be a start. “The stories of cowardice carried in the

British press, like all things else always in wartime, were designed

for home consumption by civilians.”

Weren’t Italian Soldiers Demoralized?Morale is a problem in every army, especially among draftees. Not

every soldier buys into the idea that sacrificing his life helps the

nation. Italian units ran the gamut from elite to half-baked. Morale

also varied by training, equipment, and battle conditions. In the

First World War, some 750 Italian soldiers were summarily shot to

maintain discipline during the disaster at Caporetto. The French

executed 600 of their troops in that war, the British 300. There

were no such wholesale decimations by the Fascist government in

the Second World War. The Germans reportedly shot 10,000 of

their own. Stalin’s decimations were notorious and a key factor in

Soviet battle success. Even the United States famously shot Pvt.

Eddie Slovik in 1945, the only one of 49

XXXIX, 2014 29

Jaws of Defeat (cont’d from p.15)

Italian subs in the Atlantic

had a better proportional

success rate than

Japanese subs in the Pacific

The Italian Navy was one of the finest in the world, but it had no air

arm or radar. Oil shortages restricted its activity. Its greatest liability,

however, was German chatter deciphered by British intelligence.

(Cont’d. on p. 30)

The Italian Air Force suffered losses from the Spanish Civil War and

poor industrial production. Italian pilots were excellent, but in the spirit

of team work, the Fascists did not permit ace competitions.

The Italic Way30

Jaws of Defeat (cont’d. from p.29)

condemned men

executed for

desertion during

the conflict to

maintain Amer-

ican discipline.

The stain of sur-

render looms

large in public

p e r c e p t i o n s .

When an Italian

e x p e d i t i o n a r y

force was trapped by British

Empire troops in the Egyptian-

Libyan desert in 1940, Italians

surrendered in the thousands,

eventually 130,000. There are

few places to hide in the Sahara

and surrender or death is the only

option when you have no vehicles

or gasoline left to evacuate. As

noted above, Italians were stuck

with their own, often inferior,

equipment against superior tanks

and planes. Even the Germans

were impressed by Italian units in

their “sardine cans” attacking

Sherman tanks.

We did an article on the “Art of

Surrender” in issue XXXIII to put

this subject into perspective.

Needless to say, few victorious

powers enjoy recounting their own demoralization and surrender,

including the British at Tobruk (33,000) or Singapore (80,000), the

USSR in 1941 (3 million), or the Germans in North Africa

(70,000), or Americans at Kasserine (3,700) and the Battle of the

Bulge (4,000). (In one official history, U.S. units that surrendered

at Kasserine “went out of battalion control.”)

As the war progressed and training improved, Italian units like the

Ariete, Folgore, and Centauro

Divisions could match any in the war

in spite of inferior equipment. “The

sacrifice of the Ariete, Littorio and

Trieste and the tough Folgore was

gradually forgotten. Yet without them

the Afrika Korps could not have gar-

nered the laurels it had, survived at

Alamein as long as it had, or escaped

in the manner it did.” [El Alamein, Bryn Hammond]

In East Africa (Abyssinia, Eritrea, Somalia), even the British pro-

pagandists were hard-pressed to denigrate Italian troops. The siege

of Keren, in 1941, lasted two months. “Keren was as hard a sol-

diers’ battle as was ever fought, and let it be said that nowhere in

the war did the

Germans fight more

stubbornly than those

(Italian) Savoia bat-

talions, Alpini, Ber-

saglieri and Gre-

nadiers.... except for

the German para-

chute divisions in

Italy and the

Japanese in Burma

no enemy with whom

the British and Indian troops

were matched put up a finer fight

than those Savoia battalions at

Keren.” [Eastern Epic, Compton

Mackenzie]

With the loss of Africa and the

invasion of Sicily in 1943, Italian

morale was on the downhill slide

and affected the military brass

and government. Total collapse

came after Mussolini’s fall and

Italy switched sides. The mili-

tary was thrown into chaos.

A word must be said for the mor-

tality rates of prisoners of war.

Some have estimated that more

Italians died in Soviet POW

camps than Germans (84.5% vs

35.8%)*. In fact, this rate would

be the highest mortality rate of all

prisoners in World War II. For example, 33% of American prison-

ers died in the notorious Japanese camps. Russian prisoners in

Germany suffered a 57.5% mortality. One belief is that Italian

Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, in asylum in Moscow, asked

Stalin to annihilate his compatriots to foment revolution in Italy.

People tend to forget that old-style Communists were as vicious as

Nazis. After royal Italy switched sides in 1943, some 600,000

Italian troops were enslaved by the Germans. It is estimated that

50,000 of these former allies perished

in German prison camps.

[*Exorcising Hitler, Frederick Taylor]

When did Italian TroopsBattle the Americans?One of the amazing feats of historical

revision has been exorcising Italy

from World War II. Recounting the North African campaign, for

example, the word Axis is rarely used. It is invariably “Rommel”

and the “Afrika Korps.” Military maps generally use the swastika

without the fasces to delineate frontlines and troop movements.

Yet, two-thirds of the Rommel’s forces were Italian. The

British are loath to refer to their nearly three-year strug-

The passenger liner Conte Biancamano was seized

at the Panama Canal. It became the USS Hermitage in 1942,

a troop transport, and returned to Italy in 1947.

The sacrifice of Italian troops

allowed the Afrika Korps to

garner laurels at El Alamein

and escape capture

Eight months before Italy declared war on the United States, neutral

America seized 28 Italian merchant ships and imprisoned their crews

XXXIX, 2014 31

gle with Italian adversaries except in humorous and degrading

ways.

American troops first encountered Italians at the Kasserine Pass in

February, 1943. Like the Brits, our American historians gloss over

the Italians. The fact is Kasserine was an American disaster, its

first defeat in the Western theater with 2,000 killed, 3,700 cap-

tured, and 300 tanks destroyed. It was Rommel’s last planned bat-

tle in Africa and it began with an all-German attack against the

Allied lines in Tunisia. When a break-through eluded them, the

Germans called in the Italian Centauro Division. On February

20th, Col. Luigi Bonafatti’s 5th Bersaglieri shock troops broke

through the American lines. Bonafatti was killed in action. This

is how Rommel described it: “…I have special praise for the 5th

Bersaglieri, who attacked fiercely and whose commander fell dur-

ing the attack; they threw the American, British and French forces

out of the pass, allowing the II/86 and K.10 to exploit the break-

through…”

By May, 1943, the Axis position in North Africa was hopeless and

escape by sea was impossible. Rome and Berlin ordered a gener-

al surrender.

The Americans next fought the Italians in Sicily (July, 1943). Axis

resistance cost the Allies some 20,000 killed and wounded in the

38-day battle. Axis forces were eventually cornered at Messina by

generals Patton and Montgomery. Amazingly, the trapped Axis

troops and equipment escaped to the mainland. Sicily was not a

cakewalk. Americans were to first learn of “battle fatigue” when

Gen. Patton slapped a demoralized soldier. Patton was relieved of

command.

After the Italian Kingdom surrendered in Sept., 1943, Mussolini’s

Republican army fought the Allies until 1945. One notable

engagement was the Monte Rosa Alpine Division’s attack on the

U.S. all-black 92nd Division (Buffalo Soldiers) in central Italy in

December, 1944. The 92nd was

“badly mauled” and was later with-

drawn from the sector. In February

1945, the 92nd Infantry Division

again came up against Republican

units. This time it was Bersaglieri

of the 1st Italian “Italia” Infantry

Division. The Italians successfully

blocked the American advance.

The Miracle of MessinaMuch has been written of the “miracle” of Dunkirk in 1940. Over

338,000 British and French troops were rescued by small boats

under the nose of Hitler’s conquering army. Movies have been

made, legends created, and speculation abounds as to why Hitler

didn’t do more to finish off his trapped enemies.

But who ever heard of the Axis escape from Sicily? British

Official History called it “brilliantly successful.” The Germans

ferried nearly 40,000 troops, 47 tanks and 9,600 vehicles with sup-

plies to mainland Italy. The Italians managed to escape with

70,000 troops, 41 artillery pieces, 227 vehicles with supplies, and

even 14 mules. (The Germans confiscated the few Italian trucks

when they arrived on the mainland.) When General

Patton’s forces finally captured Messina on August 17th,

the last evacuation ship had left just hours earlier. You will not see

this in the iconic movie Patton.

Why did the Allies allow this massive escape when they had con-

trol of the air, land, and sea? Was

it Allied incompetence, fear of

Italian shore batteries on the

mainland, or the rumor that the

still intact Italian battle fleet was

headed to the Straits of Messina?

Perhaps all of the above, and

maybe political reasons.

It should also be noted that Sicily

was lost, in part, because the

British had broken the German

Enigma code. All the Italian

defensive plans were learned by

reading German communiques.

Moreover, Italian General

Alfredo Guzzoni had ordered

both German divisions in Sicily

to cover what was to be the actu-

al Allied landing site. But trust-

ing their own judgement the

Germans split their divisions,

allowing the Allies to gain the beachhead. Had Guzzoni been

obeyed, and the Germans kept the secrets, the Allied landing might

have been disastrous.

Equipment &Industrial FailuresWe can rightly wonder why the Italians were so technologically

behind during the war. The lack of radar on its warships was

astounding when we consider that inven-

tor Guglielmo Marconi pioneered radio

and microwave technology. He died in

1937 but Mussolini had provided him a

laboratory ship, the Electra, during the

1930s. Rather, it was the British who

saw the value in radar and brought it to

perfection.

British radar often neutralized the powerful Italian navy and

helped Britain counter the Italian air attacks of 1940-41. British

radar tracked Italian bombers and fighters that crossed the

Channel. This Italian “blitz” was short-lived and, according to

British accounts, ineffective. Unlike the German blitz, the Italians

targeted port installations not the London population. The primary

reason the Italian Air Force was diverted from more vital fronts

was a matter of revenge. Soon after Italy declared war on France

and Britain in June, 1940, the Brits sent bombers to attack Italian

industrial cities. One raid on June 12th accidentally bombed a res-

idential neighborhood in Torino, killing fourteen civilians and

wounding twenty children. Outraged by the attack on civilians,

the Italians asked Germany for an airdrome in Belgium and dis-

patched a squadron to participate in the air war.

British historians, if they mention the

Italian effort at all, say it came out of (Cont’d. on p. 32)

Sicily: The Allies learned of

Italian defensive plans

by reading German

communiques

General Alfredo Guzzoni,

Commander of Sicily, correctly

predicted the Allied beach head.

But the Germans ignored his

defense plan.

don’t speak Italian. Much of this terminology was created from

the Valachi Hearings of 1963 and the Godfather sagas. Since then,

America prefers its Italian American criminals well organized, and

real Italians unruly and disorganized. And we mustn’t forget the

civilian monikers of guido and goombah, again born within the

Italian American community.

Some Italian Americans would be appalled were anyone to borrow

these terms outside the community. There can be no Madoff

Crime Family or a Mexican goombah. Likewise, among white

Americans no one would consider Anglo as a multi-ethnic label.

One might wince at seeing the racial mix of Boston Celtics or

Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, but these are merely team names.

The Amish may still call everyone else “the English,” from colo-

nial days. And even our immigrant grandparents called non-

Italians “Mericans” as a point of reference.

Then, there’s the world of white. The Census Bureau sees most

European Americans as white. Actually, we are “non-Hispanic

whites.” What about white Hispanics? They’re lumped with any

Spanish-speaking peoples. Do you wonder how many white

Hispanics choose not to check the Hispanic box on the census

form? Probably a lot.

But even white is a

loaded word. For

many Americans,

especially in the

heartland, white

means northern

European. I

learned that when

my nephew mar-

ried a

Midwesterner of

Scottish stock. She

matter-of-fact ly

stated that Italians

were not consid-

ered white in that part of the country. In fact, even the word heart-

land connotes more than geography. Like the old “silent majori-

ty,” it whispers white. At one time even the Irish were in their own

category as “non-white” papists.

The point is most people take their proprietary ethnic tags seri-

ously. But among Italian Americans there is little attachment to

the word Latin. It has drifted so far away from us that the media,

academia, and government have permanently assigned it to others.

So, is Pope Francis a Latin (Latino in Spanish and Italian)? Yes

he is! And more Latin than many of the people of

South (or Ibero) America. ****

Mussolini’s bombastic need to show the Italian flag on every

front. They neglect to mention the provocative Torino raid. As

with every other front, the Brits dismiss the Italian air attacks as

a humorous sideshow, of little consequence. (Was the morale-

boosting Doolittle raid on Japan pointless?) They refer to the

Italian use of antiquated biplanes to escort their bombers.

Nevertheless, they concede that the biplanes (CR/42 Falcons)

gave as good as they got. They also concede the courage of

these daring pilots in fighting during the bitter winter in open

cockpits against radar detection and the legendary Spitfires and

Hurricanes.

Italy’s Battle of Britain lasted only five months (October, 1940

– April, 1941) but it gave the embattled Italian people satisfac-

tion in having avenged British bombings.

Biplanes weren’t used exclusively by Italians; the British had

the Gladiator, not as good as the Falcons but it had an enclosed

cockpit. By 1943, the Italians had developed the Macchi 205

Veltro (Greyhound) a fighter even envied by the Germans.

Another, the SM-79 Sparviero proved to be one of the most (if

not the most) successful torpedo bombers of the Second World

War, claiming 72 Allied warships and 196 freighters.

To compensate for the lack of heavy tanks, the Italians devel-

oped a mobile 75-mm anti-tank gun called the Semovente. They

were quite effective against Allied tanks in North Africa, Russia,

and Sicily. However, like most of Italy’s war effort, not enough

of these weapons could be produced.

Reflections on DefeatYou can see that the full story of Italian military history in the

20th Century has yet to be told in the English-speaking world.

When historians talk of Italy’s surrender in 1943 they are more

correctly referring to the Kingdom of Italy (south of Rome).

Fascist Italy (aka Italian Social Republic) fought on until May 1,

1945, even after Mussolini’s summary execution by Communist

partisans. General Rudolfo Graziani signed the surrender of his

remaining 50,000-man army one day before the German Army

in Italy. The German homeland surrendered on May 8th.

Italy was a great power in 1940. But she has lost that status

today. She lost her empire and the Istrian peninsula, notwith-

standing royal Italy’s switch to the Allied side in 1943 and even

after a massive lobbying campaign by Italian Americans. Little

did she know that her ethnic prestige was also a fatality. Media

mogul Ted Turner, quoted in the opening of this article is a real-

32

Jaws of Defeat (cont’d. from p.31)

The full story of Italian military

history in the 20th Century

has yet to be told in the

English-speaking world

istic reflection of the typical American view of Italy’s military his-

tory, whether as an ally or an enemy. It is sustained by history

books, feature film libraries, and more current television

documentaries.

****

Latino (cont’d. from p.27)

Would a media style book call these

Americans kids in a Benetton ad “Anglos?”

If they all speak English or live an

American lifestyle, why not?

The Italic Way